McGraw-Hill Education Preparation for the GED Test by McGraw-Hill Education Editors

Author:McGraw-Hill Education Editors
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
Published: 2018-06-18T04:00:00+00:00

Solving this equation, F = 25. There were 25 tickets sold to family members.

This example illustrates two important points about working with this type of word problem. First, when creating your equations, you need to put like information together. In this case, you put information about the ticket sales together and information about the money together.

Second, these questions tend to ask for only one of the variables. Save yourself some work by eliminating the other variable first. That way, you do not have to solve the whole system.

EXAMPLE 23

A gym is storing 5-pound and 10-pound dumbbells. If there are a total of 10 dumbbells weighing 70 pounds altogether, how many 10-pound dumbbells does the gym have in storage?

The unknowns are the number of 5-pound dumbbells and the number of 10-pound dumbbells. Let’s call these x (5-pound) and y (10-pound). There are a total of 10 dumbbells, so x + y = 10 weighing a total of 70 pounds. Because each 5-pound dumbbell contributes 5 pounds to this total and each 10-pound dumbbell contributes 10 pounds, 5 x + 10y = 70.

The question asks only for the number of 10-pound dumbbells, which is y. Therefore, eliminate x first.

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