word problem

Question

Bob bought a shirt at a 20% discount sale for 14$. What was the original price of the shirt?

Answer 1

Hello, Nathan

 

There are different ways you can set this problem.  Let me set it up as a proportion.  I will put (perctange/100%).  And the discounted price over the original price. Note, that if the person received a 20% discount, that person only paid 80% of the original price.So, this is what we have

 

80%/100%= 14/x,                 where x is the original price of the shirt

80x= 1400                               Using Cross Products

    x= 17.50

 

This is the original price of the shirt.

 

I hope this helps out.  Take care.

 

D. Y. T.

Answer 2

The first step when approaching discount word problems is setting up the pieces of the problem in a numerical format that you might be more familiar with. 

 

I like to teach this using the is, of, percent and 100 model .

 

start by writing down the following: 

 

is       %

--  =  ---

of     100

 

we know that the percent discussed is 20% - fill that in. 

 

we know that 14 bucks is not the whole price, therefore it fills in the IS blank. 

 

when you fill in everything except the OF blank, you can read the set up to yourself as follows: 

"14 IS 20% OF what number?" 

 

now you just need to cross multiply. 

1400 = 20x should be your resulting equation. 

get x alone by dividing by 20 on both sides. 

70 should be your final result! 

 

Math is not my favorite subject nor is it my strong point, but I like to help out when possible. I hope this was helpful! 

 

--nick