At the city museum, child admission is $5.30 and adult admission is $9.60. On Monday, 145 tickets were sold for a total sales of $1177.00. How many child tickets were sold that day?

Answer 1

Write a system of equations to represent the information.

First, I will designate the variables.

x = child tickets

y = adult tickets

If a total of 145 tickets were sold, that makes one equation x + y = 145. If the total sales were 1177 and a child's ticket is $5.30 and an adult ticket is $9.60, the second equation is 5.30x + 9.60y = 1177.

x + y = 145

5.30x + 9.60y = 1177

You can use substitution or elimination to solve this system. I will use substitution since x and y in the first equation are easy to solve for. Since we only need the amount of children's tickets, I will solve for y to put everything in terms of x.

y = 145 - x

Substitute into the other equation.

5.30x + 9.60(145 - x) = 1177

Solve for x.

5.30x + 1392 - 9.60x = 1177

-4.3x + 1392 = 1177

-4.3x = -215

x = 50

50 child tickets were sold that day.