Math Word Problem

Question

Netflix charges a fee of $98 per year for their streaming service. Amazon video charges $38 per year plus a charge of $2.50 for every video that is downloaded. How many videos would have to be downloaded for the two companies to charge the same amount for a year of service? Write an equation.

Answer 1

So Netflix charges a flat fee of $98. However, Amazon charges $38 per year PLUS $2.50 for each video that you download. So your total cost for Amazon fluctuates depending on how many videos you download per year. Let's say the number of videos downloaded is represent by the variable "v". We can write the following equation to show the yearly cost for Amazon:

$38 + $2.50v

Now we want to know how many videos we need to equal the cost of Netflix. So we can set our equation equal to $98 and solve for v:

38 + 2.5v = 98

-38 -38

2.5v/2.5 = 60/2.5

v = 24

This tells us we would need to download 24 videos for the cost to be the same.

Answer 2

Rachel,

If Netflix costs $98 per year regardless of how many movies you actually watch, we can write that as N = $98.

Amazon costs a yearly fee of $38 in addition to $2.50 per movie, so we can write A = $38 + $2.50x (x is the number of movies you watch).

Now we set these two equal to each other:

38 + 2.50x = 98 (This is the equation we were asked to write).

2.50x = 60

X = 24.

24 movies have to be downloaded for the two companies to charge the same amount for a year of service.

Hope this helps! :)