Can you help me with this?

Question

A salesman's salary is $9 per hour plus $250 in sales commission. His total weekly pay this week was $565. How many hours did the salesman work this week? Write an equation to model and solve the problem. Explain the answer in terms of the problem. Show all work.

Answer 1

Hi Hope,

Let's use the variable, x , to represent the number of hours he worked.

The portion of his pay due to his hourly rate of $9 per hour can be represented as: $9x

Then we can add $250 to the amount earned due to his hourly rate and represent that as: $9x + $250

Now we can write the following equation to represent the entire situation described and use inverse operations to solve the equation and find the number of hours he worked:

$9x + 250 = $5659x + 250 - 250 = 565 - 250

9x = 315

9x/9 - 315 / 9

x = 35

He worked 35 hours to earn a total of $565