Question

Latonya bought flowers for her mother. She spent $45. Each tulip was $1 and each rose was $2. She bought 3 more tulips than roses.

Let t be the number of tulips. Which algebraic sentence would help you figure out how many tulips Latonya bought?

Answer 1

if we let T be the number of tulips, and R be the number of roses, we can see that the cost to buy the flowers is $1T + $2R. If she bought 3 more tulips than roses, we know that T = R + 3. We could also write this just using 1 variable: $1T + $2(T-3). We use the (T-3) instead of R because she bought 3 fewer roses than she did tulips.

If you know how much she spent, you can set that equal to your expression for the cost and find out how many tulips were bought. From that, you can find out how many roses were bought, too.