Lisa has a 12% discount coupon for a clothing store.She sees a new purse that.After the 12% discount, Lisa paid $52.80 for the purse.What was the original price

Question

Solve it if you think you are smart.

Answer 1

The original price was set at $60.  The best way to get to the answer is look at it as if the original cost were a variable, ( we usually use X) so what we know is that 12%*X= the amount of the discount, then we can add that back to the "known" discounted price of 52.80 so we end up with X*12%=X+52.80.  Now we want to get all of our X's on one side and our "known" number on the other, I personally prefer having my variables on the left of the equals sign and constants, or "known" numbers on the right of the equals sign, I achieve this by subtracting an X from 52.80, since I did it on one side I must do it on the other, turning the equation into X-X*12%=52.80, now we can subtract X from X*12% (or X-0.12X if you prefer, they are the same thing) and we get X*88%=52.80 (or 0.88X=52.80), then we would divide  by 88% to get X by itself X=52.80/88% ( or X=52.80/0.88) and we end up with $60!