Question

For $7.52, you purchased 8 pens and highlightersfrom a local bookstore. Each highlighter cost $1.09 and each pen cost $.69. How many pens did you buy?

Answer 1

you'll need to set up a system of equations for this

let's let p = # of pens and h = # of highlighters. since it's asking for how many pens, we'll solve for p at the end.

since there are 8 total items, p + h = 8
since each pen costs $0.69, each highlighter costs $1.09, and the total amount spent is $7.52, we can represent this as

0.69p + 1.09h = 7.52

solve for p. to help you out, you can multiply the first equation by 1.09 on both sides, that way you'll have 1.09h in both equations and you can simply subtract to solve for p.