The formula, y = square root 36x gives the percent price markup of a major league baseball ticket x days prior to a game. A, B, C...

Question

I am studying for a test, but we did not ever go over how to do these questions.

A) Find Y when x = 16 and interpret your result. Is the answer 24? There is a 16 percent price markup 24 days prior to the game?

B) Simplify the equation y = square root 36x. Is it 6 times square root x?

C) Find y when x = 16 using your equation from part B. Do you get the same answer as in part A? Is it 6 times square root 16 = 24?

Answer 1

Hi Tor P.,

Assuming that you mean y=(36x)^0.5, then yes, y=24 for x=16.

The markup means the additional premium that you must pay to buy the ticket.

Y is the percent markup, and X is the number of days. They are NOT interchangable! So in (A), the corrected statement is "There is a 24% price markup, 16 days prior to the game".

So (B) yes, and (C) yes (that is, I hope you got that!).

What this question is "getting at", is that products of terms under the square root function are equal to the product of the square roots of the individual terms. In math terminology, multiplication is distributive across exponentiation (taking the square root is equivalent to raising to the exponent of 0.5, which I also hope you appreciate). In the same way, multiplication is distributive across addition, i.e. a(b+c) = ab + ac . These functions have a heirarchical relationship, which you probably already know as "PEMDAS".

If you're getting an intuitive flash that maybe more math operations have a heirarchy, you are right. To find out more, ask your teacher, or search a bit on Google!

-- Cheers, -- Mr. d.