Maya and Sally were the two finalists in a singing competition. The person with the most votes from the audience was chosen as the winner. Sally received 25% of the total votes and lost by 62,500 votes. No person in the audience was allowed to vote more than once. The equation below represents this situation, where y is the total number of votes cast and x is the number of votes Maya received. :
x - 62,500 = 0.25y

If a total of 125,000 people voted, how many votes did Maya receive? Do not enter comma for placeholder values.

Question

Maya and Sally were the two finalists in a singing competition. The person with the most votes from the audience was chosen as the winner. Sally received 25% of the total votes and lost by 62,500 votes. No person in the audience was allowed to vote more than once. The equation below represents this situation, where y is the total number of votes cast and x is the number of votes Maya received. :
x - 62,500 = 0.25y

If a total of 125,000 people voted, how many votes did Maya receive? Do not enter comma for placeholder values.

anonymous · Answer

x = number of votes Maya received: this is what you want to solve for
y = total number of votes cast

y is given to you = 125,000

Solve for x by plugging in y:

x - 62,500 = 0.25(125,000)
x - 62,500 = 31,250
x = 93,750 = Number of votes Maya received

anonymous · Answer

Nice salute there son ;) I take it you want to join the ranks in the future! Awesome.
This is really easy, you just need to plug and chug the numbers. 
x = number of votes Maya received: this is what you want to solve for 
 y = total number of votes cast 
 125,000=y 
 so: 
 x-62500= .25*125,000 
 x-62,500=31,250 
 x=31,250+62,500 
 x=93, 750 

 You can also double check the math and see .75 (Maya's portion of the votes)*125,000 (total number of votes)=93,750.

lemanual · Answer

thnx both if you