Algebra - Applications of Linear Equations

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Section 2.3 : Applications of Linear Equations

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2. A store is having a 30% off sale and one item is now being sold for $9.95. What was the original price of the item?

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Start Solution

We’ll start by letting $p$ be the original price of the item. The price of the item has been reduced by 30% and so 0.30$p$ has been subtracted from the original price, $p$.

The equation we get for this problem is then,

\[\begin{align*}p - 0.3p & = 9.95\\ 0.7p & = 9.95\end{align*}\] Show Step 2

To finish all we need to do is divide both sides by 0.7 to get the original price of the item.

\[p = 14.2143\]

So, with rounding the original price of the item was $14.21.