Question

a person attends a book sale. paper backs are sold for $2 and hard covers are sold for $4. If someone spends $26 on 8 books, how many hard cover books did they buy. write an equation

Answer 1

trouble setting up the equations? solving them? or both?

Answer 2

trouble setting up

Answer 3

ok, we want to know how many hard cover books they bought, so let that be X

Answer 4

alright

Answer 5

let the paperbacks be Y
can you write an equation for the total number of books sold?

Answer 6

26 = 4x + 2y

Answer 7

yes... and that was the hard equation to get
but we need one more, since there are two variables....
so how many books were sold and what were they?

Answer 8

8 books were sold and were hard covered

Answer 9

why were they all hard covered? where does it say that?

Answer 10

but if that were true, your other equation would be X = 8
and this problem would be solved... don't think that's right though

Answer 11

X is the number of hardbacks; Y is the number of paperbacks; so...

Answer 12

unfortunatly this is all the book gave me as a question, although i paraphrased

Answer 13

you are overthinking this.... you know how many books were sold, some paper, some hard, so the equation is

Answer 14

how do you calculate a total?

Answer 15

that is my problem. This is the problem word for word

A library is having a book sale to raise money. Hardcover books cost $4 and paperback books cost $2 each. A person spends $26 for 8 books. How many hardcover books did she purchase?

Answer 16

number of hardbacks sold + number of softbacks sold = 8

right?

Answer 17

I really don't know

Answer 18

how many books did she buy?

Answer 19

8

Answer 20

yes... and some were hardbacks and some paperbacks

Answer 21

but we need to write that in terms of X and Y

Answer 22

the number of hardbacks + the number of paperbacks = total number of books

Answer 23

so 4x + 2y?

Answer 24

no... still overthinking it...

X + Y = 8

Answer 25

we said X was the number of hardbacks
and Y was the number of paperbacks
and we were told that 8 books in total were sold
so X + Y = 8

does that make sense?

Answer 26

yes

Answer 27

now comes the harder part... which you already did

Answer 28

so is this a system of equations ?

Answer 29

((hardback price)(number of hardbacks) + (paperback price)(number of paperbacks) = total money spent

Answer 30

yes, two variables needs two equations to solve

Answer 31

just plug in the letters and numbers and you have both equations
(this is the one you said way back up there somewhere)

Answer 32

got it ! thank you !