Question

Tommy has 200 fliers to hand out. He hands out an average of 15 fliers each hour. Let x = the number of hours spent handing out fliers. f(x) = the number of fliers Tommy has left.

a. Write an equation to model the situation, using function notation.
b. How many hours did he hand out fliers if Tommy has 50 fliers left? Show the substitution before solving the equation and give the solution.

Answer 1

An equation in function notation to model the number of fliers Tommy has left is f(x) = 200 - 15x. To find the number of hours he spent handing out fliers when he has 50 fliers left, we solve the equation to find that Tommy spent 10 hours.

Step-by-step explanation:

We are looking to write an equation using function notation to model the number of fliers Tommy has left after a certain number of hours. As Tommy starts with 200 fliers and hands out an average of 15 fliers each hour, we can express the function as f(x) = 200 - 15x, where x is the number of hours Tommy spends handing out fliers and f(x) is the number of fliers left.

To find out how many hours Tommy spent handing out fliers when he has 50 left, we substitute f(x) = 50 into the equation and solve for x:
f(x) = 200 - 15x50 = 200 - 15x

We solve this by subtracting 200 from both sides and then dividing by -15:

-150 = -15x

x = 10

Therefore, Tommy spent 10 hours handing out fliers to have 50 left.