There are 38 houses for sale, some have floor plan "x" and some have floor plan "y" The x homes are 175,000. Each and the y homes sell for 200,000 each. The total worth of all homes is 7,200,000. I need to figure out how to use the method of elimination to find out how many houses are available in each floor plan. Please help me, Thank you

There are 38 homes.

Of this 38, some have floor plan x and some have floor plan y.

So, let x be the number of homes with floor plan x and y be the number of homes with floor plan y.

x + y = 38

right?

1 house with floor plan x is 175000.

How much is x houses with floor plan x?

1 house with floor plan y is 200000.

How much is y houses with floor plan y?

Add those two 'sums' to get the total 720000.

This should give you two equations. Can you post what you get? :)

Let's start by writing out the two equations you need to solve by elimination.

First, you know that there are 38 houses total. So what equation does that give you?

Second, you know that the total worth is $7.2M. Given that some houses are worth $175k each and others are worth $200k each, what equation does this give you?

Post a response with your two equations (or let me know if you're getting stuck figuring them out). Then if you're still having trouble solving them by elimination, I'll be happy to help.

Never mind. LOL. Unky beat me to it!

3 minutes! :p

It's okay though, 2 advice for the price of 1, if there is any price that is ;)

I get x+y=38 and 175,000x + 200,00y = 7,200,000... now what do I do. I think I a to add things to eliminate the x but I end up not getting good answers. What are my next steps? Thank you for helping me :)

Well done! You have the right equations. That's usually the hard part with word problems, but I can see why you're having trouble using the elimination method on this one. Those are some pretty crazy numbers! This one is a much better candidate for the substitution method, but I guess if the directions say to use elimination, you've got to do what you've got to do. :)

Anyway, here's the brute force way to do it: You need to be able to add the two equations together and somehow end up getting one of the variables to cancel out. So there are several ways you can do that. For example, if you take the first equation (x + y = 38) and multiply everything on both sides by -175,000 you'll then have a -175,000x in one equation and 175,000x in the other. That means that when you add them together, the x's will cancel. Or you could use -200,000 instead which would make the y's cancel.

One other thing you could do to make things a lot simpler would be to simplify that second equation before trying to do the elimination. If you divide everything in the second equation by 25,000 you end up with 7x + 8y = 288. That's a much easier equation to work with! That way you could just multiply the first equation by -7 (to eliminate the x terms) or -8 (to eliminate the y terms) before adding the two equations together.