Question

Sam is baking cakes at her parents' bakery. She gets paid $20 a week in addition to $3 for every cake she bakes. She made $80 this week. Write an equation to show how many cakes Sam baked this week.

Answer 1

Answer: 20 + 3x = 80

Explanation:

the first person’s answer is right but it’s backwards

Answer 2

3x + 20 = 80

Explanation:

If Sam gets paid $20 a week whether she makes any cakes or not, that is a fixed amount. The amount that she makes will only go up IF she makes cakes. She makes $3 per cake she bakes, and if the number of cakes is our unknown, the expression for that is 3x. Adding that to the fixed amount she makes is 3x + 20. Now we set that equal to 80, which is what she made in a week and solve it for x, which gives us the number of cakes she had to bake to make that $80.

3x + 20 = 80