Question

The sales team at an electronics store sold 48 computers last month. The manager at the store wants to encourage the sales team to sell more computers and is going to give all the sales team members a bonus if the number of computers sold increases by 30% in the next month. How many computers must the sales team sell to receive the bonus? Explain your reasoning.

Answer 1

Since the bonus is achieved at 130% of previous sales, you just multiply the previous sales (48) by 130% or 1.3. This gets you 62.4, but since you can't sell 40% of a computer and anything less than 62.4 will not get the salesmen the bonus, you have to round up. Therefore you need to sell 63 computers to get the bonus.

Answer 2

30% of 48 is equal to 14.4. Since the sales team cannot sell .4 of a computer, this must be rounded. Even though a 14.4 would normally round down to 14, it must be rounded up to a fifteen because 14 is less than 30% of 48. This means that the sales team must sell 15 MORE computers this month than they did last month. Last month they sold 48 computers, so they should sell 48+15 computers, or 63 computers this month.