At the grocery store, you bought a pack of gum for seventy-nine cents, a chunk of
cheese for a dollar and eighty-five cents, and an orange for fifty-six cents. You handed
the checkout person a five-dollar bill. How much change should you receive? To solve
this problem, we will use the Problem Solving Plan. Step one tells us to identify the
information we know and the information we don’t know. We should also use a good
strategy to help organize this information. First, let’s identify our known information. We
know that you bought a pack of gum for seventy-nine cents, a chunk of cheese for one
dollar and eighty-five cents, and an orange for fifty-six cents. Therefore, the total
amount of money you owe is three dollars and twenty cents. We also know that you
paid the checkout person five dollars. We don’t know the amount of change you
received. This is the unknown information the problem asks us to find. Step two of the
Problem Solving Plan tells us to choose variables for our unknowns. The unknown
information in this problem is the amount of change you received from the checkout
person. Let x represent this unknown. Step 3 says we should write an equation that
represents the relationships among the numbers in the problem. Let’s think about this.
The amount of money you pay minus the amount of money you owe equals the amount
of change you should receive. Our equation for this problem is five dollars minus three
dollars and twenty cents equals x. Now, we solve the equation. Five dollars minus three
dollars and twenty cents equals one dollar and eighty cents. X equals one dollar and
eighty cents. Therefore, you should receive one dollar and eighty cents in change. Now,
we should check our work. Replace x with one dollar and eighty cents in the original
equation. Simplify the left side of the equation to get one dollar and eighty cents equals one dollar and eighty cents. The solution is correct.
What does this mean and I really need a lot of help thanks! :)
