Compound Inequalities

[lhwalker]

I do not see And/Or (conjunction/disjunction) compound inequalities specifically in the standards. Where do they fit?

[Bill McCallum]

Lane, there isn’t anything specifically about these as you point out. They could come in as an advanced example of

A-CED.1. Create equations and inequalities in one variable and use them to solve problems.

But the standards treat inequalities with a light touch, leaving the heavy work with them to advanced courses.

[csteadman]

Could you expand on inequalities in the Common Core? Following A-CED.1 is, “Include equations arising from linear and quadratic functions, and simple rational and exponential functions.” Also, in Algebra I PARCC adds “Tasks are limited to linear, quadratic, or exponential equations with integer exponents.”

Neither of these mention inequalities. Is it implied that equations also refers to inequalities?

[Bill McCallum]

No, inequalities are not included in these standards.

[csteadman]

Ok, thanks. Just to clarify in Algebra II as well, PARCC limits A-CED.1 with, “Tasks have a real-world context. In Algebra II, tasks include exponential equations with rational or real exponents, rational functions, and absolute value functions.”

So is the inequality aspect of A-CED.1 disregarded in PARCC states?

[Bill McCallum]

I was a bit hasty last time. I shouldn’t have suggested that inequalities were not included in A-CED.1 itself … just that you shouldn’t infer inequalities from an explicit statement listing types of equations to be included.

Here’s the full text of A-CED.1

A-CED.1. Create equations and inequalities in one variable and use them to solve problems.
Include equations arising from linear and quadratic functions, and simple rational and exponential functions.

So yes, inequalities are included in this standard. However, for Algebra I, PARCC focuses only on equations, as you noted. For Algebra II, I don’t read their statement as excluding inequalities. It says tasks should have a real-world context, which is appropriate because this standard has a modeling star. And it lists things to be included, which happen all to be equations (consistent with the original standard). But that does not exclude the things not listed. So no, I don’t think PARCC states are disregarding that part of the standard. However, there is a pretty clear signal here that inequalities do not play as big a role as equations.

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