Money word equation

Question

During the sale, the price of the used car was marked down 10 percent. If the sale price of the used car was $1800, what was the price of the used car originally?

Answer 1

Hello Hanna K.,

Now, the question says that the original price of the car was reduced by 10% to get the new price of $1800. There are 2 ways to solve these types of problems by setting up an equation:

First, we can convert 10 percent to a decimal number (divide 10% by 100) to get 0.1. And let's say that the original price of the car is some value x. We can solve for x by setting up an equation as follows:

x - (0.1*x)= 1800 (This can be simplified to x-0.1x=1800)

Now we can solve for x --> 0.9x=1800, or x=$2000. So the original price of the car was $2000

The second and faster way we can solve for x is by reframing the question. We know that the original price of the car was reduced by 10% to get $1800. Another way of looking at this is saying that 90% of the original price equals $1800. So in this case, we can covert 90% to a decimal, and multiply the decimal number by the original price x:

0.9x= 1800

x=$2000

Answer 2

X = original price of the car

.9x = $1800, which is the 10% discount of car

1800/.9 = $2,000