Dolora spends at least 4 hours per week gardening. She spends more time on routine maintenance such as weeding, pruning, and watering than on harvesting vegetables and flowers. She spends at least 1hour per week harvesting. Write a system of inequalities that represent Dolora's weekly gardening time if x represents the number of weekly hours spent on routine garden maintenance, and y represents the number of weekly hours spent on harvesting? @phi, @SolomanZelman, anyone? I will give medals if you help.

Question

anonymous · Answer

y <=1, spends at least 1 hour harvesting
x > y, spends more time on maintenance vs. harvesting. 
x + y >= 4, total time spent

anonymous · Answer

@ mercer44 you are awesome!!!

anonymous · Answer

can you explain to me how you got that?

phi · Answer

She spends at least 1hour per week harvesting
 y represents harvesting


First, you have to know what "at least 1 hour" means.  It means 1 hour or more.
For example you could have harvested for 2 hours, or 3 hours.
But you would not have harvested for only ½ hour in a week.
now think:  y could be 1 hour,  or 2 hours or 3 hours... (any number 1 or bigger)
to show that you write 
y ≥ 1
(you put the bigger "number"  (y in this case) next to the wide part of >,  and you put the smaller number next to the skinny pointy end of >
we use ≥ instead of > because y is allowed to be 1. (> would mean bigger than 1)

phi · Answer

more time on maintenance  than on harvesting 
x is hours of maintenance,  y is hours harvesting
more time on maintenance means x is bigger than y  
write the bigger "number" next the the "fat" end of >  and the smaller number next to the small pointy end of >

x > y
we use > because x is bigger than y  (not bigger than or equal to y)

anonymous · Answer

Awesome! Thanks buddy! If you have questions, you can ask me too. (: