ShmoopTube

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And here's your shmoop du jour...

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There's a hot new video game system where kids can actually make money by killing bad guys.

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Not surprisingly, Mike's parents can finally get behind their son's gaming addiction.

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The system costs $230 including sales tax. Each game costs $45, tax included.

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If Mike's parents have agreed to buy him the system, plus n games for his birthday...

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...write an equation that could be used to find the number of games that they can purchase

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if they have $500 to spend.

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Here are the potential answers...

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Before we spoil the ending, hit pause and try it yourself.

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Right off the bat, notice that this problem doesn't need us to figure out the number

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of games Mike's parents can purchase...

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...we just have to come up with the equation that would get us to that information.

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Cool. One less step. Party.

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If n represents the number of games and each game costs $45...

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...then we can represent the total game cost as "45n."

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Because Mike's parents have $500 to spend, the cost of the system... 230... and the cost

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of the games... 45n... must add up to 500. So we can write this as 45n + 230 = 500.

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Bingo. Our answer is B.

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Enough fun and games. Now get back to work.

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