Question

PLEASE HELP!!!! For a long distance person to person telephone call, a telephone company charges $0.87 for the first minute, $0.15 for each additional minute, and a $2.01 service charge. If the cost of a call is $3.63, how long did the person talk?

Answer 1

You know that the for sure cost will be at least $2.01, so just subtract that from the total:
$3.63 - $2.01 = $1.62

Now we can assume the person has spoken for at least a minute since $1.62 is more than $0.87, so subtract $0.87 from your $1.62:
$1.62 - $0.87 = $0.75

"For every additional minute $0.15 is charged," so divide $0.15 from $0.75 to get the number of minutes extra spoken:

$0.75/$0.15 = 5

Therefore, since the person spoke one minute, plus 5 extra minutes, he spoke a total of:
6 minutes.