PLEASE HELP

On Thursday, a local hamburger shop sold a combined total of 508 hamburgers and cheeseburgers. The number of cheeseburgers sold was three times the number of hamburgers sold. How many hamburgers were sold on Thursday?
( Solving a word problem with two unknowns using a linear equation )

Question

PLEASE HELP

On Thursday, a local hamburger shop sold a combined total of 508 hamburgers and cheeseburgers. The number of cheeseburgers sold was three times the number of hamburgers sold. How many hamburgers were sold on Thursday? 
( Solving a word problem with two unknowns using a linear equation )

SmokeyBrown · Answer

You could represent Hamburgers and Cheeseburgers with two variables, say H and C.
Using the information given, you can write a system of equations and then solve for both variables.

simplysadie · Answer

I'm not good with equations and all that, it just confuses me

SmokeyBrown · Answer

For instance, H + C= 508. We know this because the total amounts sold are given to us.

SmokeyBrown · Answer

It's alright, we're just writing in mathematical language what we know from the plain-English question.

SmokeyBrown · Answer

Let's see if you can do this next part. The question tells us that three times as many Cheeseburgers were sold, compared to Hamburgers. Can you write a relation with the variables C and H to represent this relationship?

simplysadie · Answer

um, well if there are three times as many cheeseburgers compared to hamburgers we would multiply, right?

SmokeyBrown · Answer

Yes, that's right. We would need to multiply one of the variables, specifically H, by an amount, specifically 3, in order for the value 3H to be equal to C.

simplysadie · Answer

Okay... I'm lost now. I understand that how and what the variables and stuff are but I have no clue what to do next

SmokeyBrown · Answer

Ok, so just like we represented the total sales with an equation, we can also represent the relationship between Hamburgers and Cheeseburgers with an equation.
Since we just figured out that Cheeseburgers should be three-times as much as Hamburgers, we can say that "The amount of Cheeseburgers is equal to the amount of Hamburgers times 3"
To represent this as a mathematic equation, we could write,
C = 3H

simplysadie · Answer

i'm even more confused equations and word problems are not my strong suit and mixing them together just causes me to not understand anything. I'm just gonna call my tutor. Thanks for trying though.