v=Under her cell phone plan, Caroline pays a flat cost of $54.50 per month and $5 per gigabyte. She wants to keep her bill at $74 per month. Write and solve an equation which can be used to determine gg, the number of gigabytes of data Caroline can use while staying within her budget.

Question

Answer
Attempt 1 out of 2

Answer 1

To determine the number of gigabytes (g) Caroline can use while staying within her budget, we start by writing an equation based on her total costs.

Caroline's total monthly bill can be expressed as: \[ \text{Total Cost} = \text{Flat Cost} + \text{Cost per GB} \times \text{Number of GB} \]

Given:

• Flat Cost = $54.50
• Cost per GB = $5
• Desired Total Cost = $74

We can set up the equation: \[ 54.50 + 5g = 74 \]

Now, we can solve for \( g \):

1. Subtract 54.50 from both sides: \[ 5g = 74 - 54.50 \] \[ 5g = 19.50 \]

2. Divide both sides by 5: \[ g = \frac{19.50}{5} \] \[ g = 3.90 \]

Since Caroline cannot use a fraction of a gigabyte in this scenario, we round down to the nearest whole number. Therefore, the maximum number of gigabytes Caroline can use is:

\[ g = 3 \]

Thus, Caroline can use 3 gigabytes of data while staying within her budget.