jacke, sara and cole are selling tickets for the school drama show

Question

jake ,sara and cole are selling tickets for the school drama show. sara sell half as many tickets as jake .cole sells more than twice as much as jake . they sold a total of 538 tickets together 

Answer 1

Which of the three do we know the LEAST ABOUT????  THAT is where you assign the variable

 

Read it again.... Sara sells half as many as Jake <-- we know something about Sara...

                         Cole sells more than twice as much as Jake <-- we know something about Cole... 

Who do we know the LEAST about????  We know the least about Jake. Let X represent the # of tickets Jake sold.

 

Then Sara sold X/2  <-- half as many.

         Cole sold 2X <-- twice as many

 

Altogether they sold 538, so 538 = X + x/2 + 2X = X + 1/2X + 2X = 7/2 X

 

2+1 = 3 , 3 + 1/2 = 3 and 1/2 = 7/2

 

Solving 538 = 7/2 X  

 

           538 * 2/7 = 7/2X * 2/7   <-- multiplies both sides by 2/7 so the fraction cancels out.

 

            x = 153 and 5/7 

 

Now we deal with the fraction, because you can't sell a fraction of a ticket.

You said "MORE THAN TWICE AS MANY AS JAKE"

SO that means the other two sold LESS, so we round down.

 

Jake sells 153.

 Half of that is 76.5 so Sara sold 76.

Cole then sells more than twice as many, which is more than 306.

It must be then 538 - 153 - 76 = 309.

 

 

This is the best we can do with what is given.