Jessica is organizing a guided tour of the rain forest. The average profit per person that the touring company makes is given by the rational expression 18x+35/x

Question

, where x
is the number of people going on the tour.
What does the numerator of this rational expression represent?

Answer 1

In the rational expression \(\frac{18x + 35}{x}\), where \(x\) is the number of people going on the tour, the numerator \(18x + 35\) represents the total profit made by the touring company from the guided tour.

Here's a breakdown of the terms in the numerator:

• The term \(18x\) indicates that for each person on the tour, the company makes a profit of $18. Thus, if \(x\) people are participating, the total profit from those individuals is \(18x\).
• The term \(35\) is a constant that could represent either a fixed profit regardless of the number of participants, such as a base fee or initial profit from the tour, independent of the number of people.

Therefore, the entire expression \(18x + 35\) in the numerator describes the total profit generated from \(x\) participants, including both the profit contributed by each person and any fixed profits.