I have this math project and I'm stumped on this word problem. Any point in the right direction would be greatly appreciated..

Question

A movie theater had a certain number of tickets to give away. Five people got the tickets. The first got one third of the tickets, the second got one fourth of the tickets, and the third got one fifth of the tickets. The fourth person got eight tickets and there were five tickets left for the fifth person. Find the total number of tickets given away.

Answer 1

You'll have to set up an equation to model this situation. Let t be the total number of tickets, and see what you can come up with. (Hint: The word "of" is the same as "multiplied by.")

Answer 2

I think I got it...so the equation would look like 1/3(t)+1/4(t)+1/5(t)+8+5=total #??

Answer 3

Right, but don't forget that t is our total number of tickets, so it should be...

1/3(t)+1/4(t)+1/5(t)+8+5 = t

Then, solve for t. If you have any more questions, I'll be glad to help.

Answer 4

Okay so after isolating "t" on one side of the equation I came up with

47/60(t)=t-13...after subtracting "t"...I got

-13/60(t)=-13..after doing the division found out t=60!..think its right because I plugged it back into my orginal equation and found 1/4,1/5/,1/3 plus 8 and 5 equals 60...did I get it right?!

Answer 5

That's right. There were 60 tickets. Good job! :)