John H. answered • 06/17/21
Asian math tutor who shows you how to solve problems
Heya Lupe.
The idea for this kind of question is to try to write the sentence as an equation. The equation is just a mathematical representation of the event. Once we have an equation, it becomes much easier to calculate whatever information that you want.
In this particular problem, we have various pieces of information. A monthly salary, a bonus which happens one time (as there is only one Christmas a year), and a total amount of money earned in the year.
We want to take these different parts and combine them to write one formula. Well the salary for the year (let's write it as Sy) would be made up of the monthly salary (Sm) given each of the 12 months.
Sy = Sm + Sm + Sm ... (12 times)
Or we can write this as:
Sy = 12 × Sm
However, we don't have the yearly salary in this question, we have the total money earned. We know the total money earned (T) is the yearly salary (which is the monthly salary given 12 times) plus the additional Christmas bonus (B).
As an equation:
T = Sy + B
T = 12 × Sm + B
Cool, now we have an equation that contains total money earned, monthly salary, and bonus. Plugging in numbers, we can then solve for monthly salary.
I will do a simpler version here so you can see what that would look like. In this example, we will have a total money earned of $34, and a Christmas bonus of $10.
T = 12 × Sm + B
34 = 12Sm + 10 | subtract 10 from each side
24 = 12Sm | divide both sides by 12
2 = Sm
Great. In this example, we have calculated the solution for monthly salary.
With this knowledge, you should be able to solve the problem. Hope this was helpful. Let me know if you have any other questions.
