Some people visit a supermarket to pick up only one or two items, and they don’t use a shopping cart.

Question

Some people visit a supermarket to pick up only one or two items, and they don’t use a shopping cart. Suppose, on average, five of every seven shoppers use a shopping cart. If the supermarket has 56 shoppers, about how many carts would you expect to be in use? Write an equation that gives the number of carts C, needed to accommodate T, shoppers.

I answered the first part of the question. I got an answer of 40 carts (please correct me if I’m wrong), but I really need help with the equation part of the question. Thanks

Answer 1

56*5/7=280/7=40 You're right.

Answer 2

5 of 7 can be written as a fraction

5/7

multiply this fraction by the amount of shoppers

5//7•56 = 40

There will be 40 carts used if there are 56 shoppers

Answer 3

You are correct that for every 56 shoppers, if 5 of 7 require carts then 40 carts will be in use.

Let C represent the number of carts and S the number of shoppers.

if 5 of every 7 shoppers uses a cart then

C = 5*S/7.

If S = 56 the C = 5*56/7 = 5*8 = 40

If S = 7, then C = 5, and so on.