The product of two consecutive negative integers is 600. what is the value of the lesser integer? a. -60 b. -30 c. -25 d. -15

The answer is c. I found this by working through the different factors of 600 until I found a consecutive set.

10 and 60, the 10 needs to be bigger, lets keep going up.

15 and 40, better but still not it.
20 and 30, close.
24 and 25, this hits the mark.
I didn't worry about negatives until after I found the set because a negative times a negative is the same thing as a positive times a positive. In this case though, one must be careful to select the right number as the lower one as the larger number when the numbers are positive becomes the smaller one when you invert them to negative.