THE STORY

Alyssa works for an online company that helps thousands of small business owners across the country to advertise themselves and find customers in need of their services. After the job is completed, Alyssa’s company encourages the customers to review the business

on a scale of 1 to 5 stars. This review is saved within Alyssa’s database so that future customers

can see the average number of stars a business has received on the online service. That way the

customers can find the best rated person for the job.

Alyssa found that many business owners had questions about how they could improve their rating. One common question was: “How many 5-star reviews in a row do I need to improve my rating from where I’m at to a 4.5?” Or a 4.2? Or whatever threshold they were interested in? Rather than having to work this out from scratch in every scenario, it is more efficient to create a formula so the answer can be found quickly and efficiently.

We will start out with some simpler questions to become familiar with the situation and how averages work. By the end of this project, you will be able to efficiently answer the question above for ANY starting situation. You will use skills you learned about solving formulas for a particular variable and working with rational expressions.