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## anonymous one year ago Seriously confused! Will medal!

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1. anonymous

Given f(x) = the quantity of 4x plus 1, divided by 3, solve for f−1(3). 2 4 6 8

2. anonymous

I know that something to the ^-1 power is basically the recipricol.. like 5^-1 would be 1/5 but how would I do the fraction in this problem?

3. anonymous

f^-1(x) is not the same as 1/f(x) The easiest method to solve this is to write y instead of f(x). Then you solve the equation for x in terms of y. f(x) = (4x+1)/3 y=(4x+1)/3 3y=4x+1 . . . x=(3y-1)/4 f^-1(x)=(3x-1)/4 f^-1(3)=2

4. jim_thompson5910

Equivalently, you can plug in y = 3 and solve for x to get the same answer y=(4x+1)/3 3=(4x+1)/3 ... ... ... x = 2

5. jim_thompson5910

The notation $$\Large f^{-1}(x)$$ means "f inverse" or "the inverse of f(x)" like jualbafer wrote, it is NOT the same as $$\LARGE \frac{1}{f(x)}$$ yes it's confusing because the negative one exponent has 2 different meanings

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