sat suite question viewer
A company that provides whale-watching tours takes groups of people at a time. The company’s revenue is dollars per adult and dollars per child. If the company’s revenue for one group consisting of adults and children was dollars, how many people in the group were children?
Explanation
Choice C is correct. Let represent the number of children in a whale-watching tour group. Let represent the number of adults in this group. Because it's given that people are in a group and the group consists of adults and children, it must be true that . Since the company's revenue is dollars per child, the total revenue from children in this group was dollars. Since the company's revenue is dollars per adult, the total revenue from adults in this group was dollars. Because it's given that the total revenue for this group was dollars, it must be true that . The equations and form a linear system of equations that can be solved to find the value of , which represents the number of children in the group, using the elimination method. Multiplying both sides of the equation by yields . Subtracting from yields , which is equivalent to , or . Dividing both sides of this equation by yields . Therefore, people in the group were children.
Choice A is incorrect and may result from conceptual or calculation errors.
Choice B is incorrect. This is the number of adults in the group, not the number of children in the group.
Choice D is incorrect and may result from conceptual or calculation errors.