Question

When hired at a new job selling jewelry, you are given two pay options:

Option A: Base salary of $13,000 a year, with a commission of 7% of your sales

Option B: Base salary of $18,000 a year, with a commission of 3% of your sales

In order for option A to produce a larger income, you would need sell at least $___________ of jewelry each year.

Answer 1

Set up an equation where y = total salary and x = jewelry sold for each option. Set option A great than option B (i.e. Equation for option A > equations for option B) and solve for x.

Answer 2

I should explain: by setting the two equations where one is great than the other, it's the same as saying "which y (or total salary) is greater than the other" (which is what you're looking for. Then by solving for x, you get the amount of jewelry you need to sell for that statement to be true.

Answer 3

y=13000+7x>18000-3x
yeah, i still dont understand if i set this up right ?

Answer 4

Almost! Three little points:

First, set up each equation separately, THEN set them equal to each other. By doing that, there is no "y=" in the final form. In fact, since this is an inequality, there is no equals sign in the final form.

Second, be careful with the coefficients where the x is. Remember, these are percents, so it would not be 7x, but 7% * x, which is...?

Third, be careful of your sign in the second part. You get a base salary of 18000 PLUS 3% of any sales, not minus! Then you'd actually be losing money after each sale you made!

You're close. Most of it is right. Just think about those 3 points and tweak your equations a bit.