Monday, August 31, 2026

SAT Inequalities Made Easy: The Sign Flip Trick + Hard Questions

╔══════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║ 𝐒𝐀𝐓 𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐇 ║
║ 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐀𝐑 𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐐𝐔𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐄𝐒 ║
║ 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐌𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐝 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐒𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐘 𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐬 ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════════╝

𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐝𝐨 𝐒𝐀𝐓 𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡 𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬?

Because they look almost exactly like equations.

You see:

𝟑𝐱 + 𝟒 = 𝟏𝟗

and you know what to do.

Then the SAT changes one symbol:

𝟑𝐱 + 𝟒 ≥ 𝟏𝟗

Now you are no longer looking for just one answer.

You are looking for a whole collection of values.

That is the central idea behind inequalities:

╭──────────────────────────────╮
│ 𝐄𝐐𝐔𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 → 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞 │
│ 𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐐𝐔𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘 → 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 │
╰──────────────────────────────╯

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝟏 — 𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐖 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐒𝐘𝐌𝐁𝐎𝐋𝐒
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

There are four basic inequality signs:

𝐱 < 𝟕
→ x is less than 7

𝐱 > 𝟕
→ x is greater than 7

𝐱 ≤ 𝟕
→ x is less than or equal to 7

𝐱 ≥ 𝟕
→ x is greater than or equal to 7

The tiny horizontal line underneath the symbol is important.

It means:

𝐄𝐐𝐔𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘 𝐈𝐒 𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐎𝐖𝐄𝐃.

So:

𝐱 < 𝟓

does NOT include 5.

But:

𝐱 ≤ 𝟓

DOES include 5.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝟐 — 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐑𝐔𝐋𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐓 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐆𝐄𝐓
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Here is the most important rule in this entire guide:

╔══════════════════════════════════╗
║ 𝐌𝐔𝐋𝐓𝐈𝐏𝐋𝐘 𝐎𝐑 𝐃𝐈𝐕𝐈𝐃𝐄 𝐁𝐘 𝐀 ║
║ 𝐍𝐄𝐆𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐍𝐔𝐌𝐁𝐄𝐑? ║
║ ║
║ 𝐅𝐋𝐈𝐏 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐈𝐆𝐍! ║
╚══════════════════════════════════╝

For example:

−𝟐𝐱 > 𝟏𝟎

Divide by −2.

Because −2 is negative:

𝐱 < −𝟓

Notice what happened:

became <

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝟑 — 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐈𝐆𝐍 𝐃𝐎𝐄𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐅𝐋𝐈𝐏
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Do not flip the sign every time you move something.

For example:

𝟓𝐱 − 𝟑 ≤ 𝟏𝟕

Add 3:

𝟓𝐱 ≤ 𝟐𝟎

Divide by +5:

𝐱 ≤ 𝟒

Nothing flips because 5 is positive.

A useful mental test is:

𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐄 → 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐘

𝐍𝐄𝐆𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐄 → 𝐅𝐋𝐈𝐏

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝟒 — 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐀𝐓 𝐖𝐀𝐘 𝐓𝐎 𝐒𝐎𝐋𝐕𝐄
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Treat an inequality almost like an equation.

Example:

𝟒𝐱 + 𝟕 > 𝟐𝟑

Subtract 7:

𝟒𝐱 > 𝟏𝟔

Divide by 4:

𝐱 > 𝟒

That's it.

But always perform one final check:

𝐃𝐢𝐝 𝐈 𝐝𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐛𝐲 𝐚 𝐧𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞?

If no, the sign remains unchanged.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝟓 — 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐓𝐖𝐎-𝐒𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐃 𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐐𝐔𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Sometimes the SAT gives you a sandwich:

𝟐 < 𝐱 + 𝟓 ≤ 𝟏𝟏

Subtract 5 from ALL THREE parts:

𝟐 − 𝟓 < 𝐱 ≤ 𝟏𝟏 − 𝟓

Therefore:

−𝟑 < 𝐱 ≤ 𝟔

The answer contains every number between −3 and 6, except −3 itself.

But 6 IS included.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝟔 — 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐍𝐔𝐌𝐁𝐄𝐑 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐄 𝐂𝐎𝐃𝐄
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

A number-line question can often be solved almost instantly.

𝐎𝐏𝐄𝐍 𝐂𝐈𝐑𝐂𝐋𝐄
→ endpoint NOT included

𝐂𝐋𝐎𝐒𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐈𝐑𝐂𝐋𝐄
→ endpoint included

So:

𝐱 > 𝟐

means:

○──────→
𝟐

while:

𝐱 ≥ 𝟐

means:

●──────→
𝟐

And direction matters:

←──────○
𝟐

means:

𝐱 < 𝟐

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝟕 — 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐐𝐔𝐈𝐂𝐊 𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐏𝐇 𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐂𝐊
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Whenever you see a number-line graph, ask two questions:

𝐐𝟏. 𝐈𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐩𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐭 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐨𝐫 𝐜𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐝?

𝐐𝟐. 𝐖𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐡 𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐝?

That gives you the inequality.

You do not need to guess.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝟖 — 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐒 𝐇𝐈𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐐𝐔𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐄𝐒
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

SAT word problems often hide the inequality symbol inside ordinary English.

Memorize these translations:

𝐀𝐓 𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐓
→ ≥

𝐀𝐓 𝐌𝐎𝐒𝐓
→ ≤

𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐍
→ >

𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐍
→ <

𝐍𝐎 𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐍
→ ≤

𝐍𝐎 𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐍
→ ≥

𝐆𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐍
→ >

𝐅𝐄𝐖𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐍
→ <

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝟗 — 𝐓𝐇𝐄 “𝐀𝐓 𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐓” 𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐏
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Suppose a problem says:

“A score of at least 80 is required.”

At least means 80 is acceptable.

Therefore:

𝐱 ≥ 𝟖𝟎

Not:

𝐱 > 𝟖𝟎

This tiny difference can decide the entire answer.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝟏𝟎 — 𝐓𝐇𝐄 “𝐀𝐓 𝐌𝐎𝐒𝐓” 𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐏
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“At most 25” means 25 is allowed.

Therefore:

𝐱 ≤ 𝟐𝟓

Compare:

“less than 25”

𝐱 < 𝟐𝟓

One word changes the mathematics.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝟏𝟏 — 𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐐𝐔𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐄𝐒 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐖𝐎 𝐕𝐀𝐑𝐈𝐀𝐁𝐋𝐄𝐒
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Now the SAT can move from a number line to a coordinate plane.

Consider:

𝐲 > 𝟐𝐱 + 𝟏

First draw the boundary:

𝐲 = 𝟐𝐱 + 𝟏

Then determine which side belongs to the solution.

Because the inequality is:

𝐲 > ...

the solution is above the boundary.

Because equality is NOT included, the boundary is dashed.

So remember:

𝐲 > 𝐟(𝐱)
→ above + dashed

𝐲 < 𝐟(𝐱)
→ below + dashed

𝐲 ≥ 𝐟(𝐱)
→ above + solid

𝐲 ≤ 𝐟(𝐱)
→ below + solid

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝟏𝟐 — 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐓𝐄𝐒𝐓-𝐀-𝐏𝐎𝐈𝐍𝐓 𝐌𝐄𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐃
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

If you are unsure which side of a boundary is correct, test a point.

Suppose:

𝐲 > 𝐱 + 𝟐

Try the point:

(𝟎,𝟎)

Substitute:

𝟎 > 𝟎 + 𝟐

That becomes:

𝟎 > 𝟐

False.

Therefore, the side containing (0,0) is NOT the solution.

This method is particularly useful when a graph is unfamiliar.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝟏𝟑 — 𝐒𝐘𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐌𝐒 𝐎𝐅 𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐐𝐔𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐄𝐒
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Suppose:

𝐱 ≥ 𝟑

and

𝐱 < 𝟖

Both must be true.

Therefore:

𝟑 ≤ 𝐱 < 𝟖

Think of this as finding the common region.

𝐀𝐍𝐃 = 𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐀𝐏

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝟏𝟒 — 𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 “𝐎𝐑” 𝐌𝐄𝐀𝐍𝐒
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Now consider:

𝐱 < −𝟒

𝐱 > 𝟑

These are two separate possibilities.

The solution is:

𝐱 < −𝟒 𝐎𝐑 𝐱 > 𝟑

Do not search for one continuous interval.

Remember:

𝐀𝐍𝐃 → intersection / overlap

𝐎𝐑 → either possibility

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝟏𝟓 — 𝐀 𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐋 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐋𝐃 𝐒𝐀𝐓 𝐌𝐎𝐃𝐄𝐋
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Imagine a student has $50.

A ticket costs $12 and each additional item costs $4.

If x represents the number of additional items, the total must not exceed $50.

Write:

𝟏𝟐 + 𝟒𝐱 ≤ 𝟓𝟎

Subtract 12:

𝟒𝐱 ≤ 𝟑𝟖

Divide:

𝐱 ≤ 𝟗.𝟓

But x represents a number of items.

You cannot buy half an item.

Therefore the greatest possible whole-number value is:

𝐱 = 𝟗

This illustrates an important SAT habit:

𝐀𝐋𝐆𝐄𝐁𝐑𝐀 𝐀𝐍𝐒𝐖𝐄𝐑 ≠ 𝐀𝐋𝐖𝐀𝐘𝐒 𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃

The context matters.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝟏𝟔 — 𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐁𝐋𝐄𝐌
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

A gym charges $20 to join and $8 per month.

A student can spend no more than $68.

How many months can the student afford?

Let x = number of months.

Write:

𝟐𝟎 + 𝟖𝐱 ≤ 𝟔𝟖

Subtract 20:

𝟖𝐱 ≤ 𝟒𝟖

Divide:

𝐱 ≤ 𝟔

Therefore:

𝐌𝐚𝐱𝐢𝐦𝐮𝐦 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐡𝐬 = 𝟔

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝟏𝟕 — 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐍𝐄𝐆𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐏 𝐑𝐄𝐕𝐈𝐒𝐈𝐓𝐄𝐃
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Solve:

𝟕 − 𝟑𝐱 ≥ 𝟏𝟔

Subtract 7:

−𝟑𝐱 ≥ 𝟗

Now divide by −3.

𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐏.

This is the danger point.

The sign must reverse:

𝐱 ≤ −𝟑

A useful habit:

Whenever the coefficient of x becomes negative immediately before division, mentally say:

“𝐅𝐋𝐈𝐏.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝟏𝟖 — 𝐖𝐇𝐘 𝐃𝐎𝐄𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐈𝐆𝐍 𝐅𝐋𝐈𝐏?
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

This is not an arbitrary SAT rule.

Take:

𝟐 < 𝟓

This is true.

Multiply both sides by −1:

−𝟐 > −𝟓

The order on the number line has reversed.

That is why:

< becomes >

and

becomes <

when multiplying or dividing by a negative number.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝟏𝟗 — 𝐀 𝐅𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐖𝐀𝐘 𝐓𝐎 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐊
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Instead of memorizing dozens of separate rules, remember this chain:

╔═══════════════════════════════╗
║ 𝟏. 𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐒𝐋𝐀𝐓𝐄 ║
║ 𝟐. 𝐒𝐈𝐌𝐏𝐋𝐈𝐅𝐘 ║
║ 𝟑. 𝐒𝐎𝐋𝐕𝐄 ║
║ 𝟒. 𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐂𝐊 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐍𝐄𝐆𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐄 ║
║ 𝟓. 𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐂𝐊 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐗𝐓 ║
╚═══════════════════════════════╝

This is much safer than trying to solve everything mentally.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝟐𝟎 — 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐈 𝐒𝐀𝐓 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐍𝐆𝐄
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

𝐐𝟏.

Solve:

𝟔𝐱 − 𝟓 > 𝟏𝟗

𝐒𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧:

𝟔𝐱 > 𝟐𝟒

𝐱 > 𝟒

𝐐𝟐.

Solve:

−𝟓𝐱 + 𝟏𝟎 ≤ 𝟑𝟎

Subtract 10:

−𝟓𝐱 ≤ 𝟐𝟎

Divide by −5 and flip:

𝐱 ≥ −𝟒

𝐐𝟑.

Solve:

𝟑 ≤ 𝟐𝐱 + 𝟏 < 𝟏𝟏

Subtract 1:

𝟐 ≤ 𝟐𝐱 < 𝟏𝟎

Divide by 2:

𝟏 ≤ 𝐱 < 𝟓

𝐐𝟒.

A quantity must be no greater than 75.

Which inequality represents the statement?

𝐱 ≤ 𝟕𝟓

𝐐𝟓.

Which value satisfies:

𝐱 > −𝟐?

A. −𝟓
B. −𝟑
C. −𝟐
D. 𝟎

Answer:

𝐃. 𝟎

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝟐𝟏 — 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐈𝐕𝐄-𝐒𝐄𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐂𝐊
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Before submitting an inequality answer, run this mental checklist:

✓ Did I translate the words correctly?

✓ Did I distribute brackets correctly?

✓ Did I isolate x?

✓ Did I multiply or divide by a negative?

✓ If yes, did I reverse the sign?

✓ Is the endpoint included?

✓ Does the answer make sense in the real-world situation?

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝟐𝟐 — 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐔𝐋𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐄 𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐐𝐔𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘 𝐌𝐄𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐘 𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐃
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

╭────────────────────────────────╮
│ < → 𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐒 │
│ > → 𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐄 │
│ ≤ → 𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐒 𝐎𝐑 𝐄𝐐𝐔𝐀𝐋 │
│ ≥ → 𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐄 𝐎𝐑 𝐄𝐐𝐔𝐀𝐋 │
│ │
│ 𝐍𝐄𝐆𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐄 → 𝐅𝐋𝐈𝐏 │
│ 𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐄 → 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐘 │
│ │
│ 𝐎𝐏𝐄𝐍 → 𝐄𝐐𝐔𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘 𝐄𝐗𝐂𝐋𝐔𝐃𝐄𝐃 │
│ 𝐂𝐋𝐎𝐒𝐄𝐃 → 𝐄𝐐𝐔𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘 𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐋𝐔𝐃𝐄𝐃│
│ │
│ 𝐀𝐍𝐃 → 𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐀𝐏 │
│ 𝐎𝐑 → 𝐄𝐈𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐁𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘 │
╰────────────────────────────────╯

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐒𝐀𝐓 𝐓𝐀𝐊𝐄𝐀𝐖𝐀𝐘
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Linear inequalities are not really about memorizing a large collection of formulas.

They are about controlling one idea:

𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐂𝐇 𝐕𝐀𝐋𝐔𝐄𝐒 𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐎𝐖𝐄𝐃?

Once you see the question that way, the symbols become easier.

If the SAT says:

“at least”

think:

≥

If it says:

“at most”

think: