desprate algebra help?

A consumer electronics company sells 6.7 million MP3 players per month at a price of $100 apiece; when the price is lowered to $80, the company sells 10.2 million players per month. How many MP3 players can the company expect to sell per month at a price of $75?

Comments

  • This is best solved by graphing. You have to assume that this price and quantity sold are a linear relationship.

    We have two points. (6.7, 100) and (10.2, 80). So, the slope is

    (80 - 100) / ( 10.2 - 6.7) = -20 / 3.5 = 5.71

    So, we are looking for x where x is (x, 75)

    We know slope is 5.71. So plug this back into the slope equation:

    (75-80) / (x - 10.2) = 5.71

    -5 / (x-10.2) = 5.71

    5 / 5.71 = x - 10.2

    0.88 = x - 10.2

    10.2 + 0.88 = x = 11.08

    x = 11.08

    Since the numbers seem to be rounded to the nearest tenth of a million, round it up to x = 11.1, or 11.1 million MP3 players can expect to be sold.

  • Assuming a straight line, we can approximate an answer.

    By lowering the price $20, sales went up by 3.5 million. So by lowering the price another $5 (1/4 of $20), we can guess that sales will go up by 1/4 of 3.5 million.

    3.5/4 = 0.875

    0.875 million = 875,000

    So total sales would be 10,200,000 + 875,000 =

    11,075,000 MP3 players

    I hope this helps!

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