How many tickets sold?

Question

A total of 399 tickets were sold for the school play. They were either adult tickets or student tickets. The number of student tickets sold was two times the number of adult tickets sold. How many adult tickets were sold?

Answer 1

Hello Carolyn

You have two unknowns and need two equations to solve it. You know that the total number of tickets sold is 399. Let A be the number of adult tickets sold and C be the number of children tickets sold.

A + C = 399

The number of children tickets sold is twice the number of adult tickets sold you you can write

C = 2A

Substitute this into the first equation and you can eliminate one variable.

A + (2A) = 399

3A = 399

A = 133 tickets

Therefore the number of children tickets are twice that.

C = 2(133) = 266 tickets