Question

Claire is a salesperson who sells computers at an electronics store. She makes a base pay of $80 each day and then is paid a $20 commission for every computer sale she makes. Write an equation for P, commaP, in terms of x, commax, representing Claire's total pay on a day on which she sells xx computers.

Answer 1

Claire's total pay P on a day when she sells x computers can be expressed as the equation P = $80 + ($20 × x), where $80 is her base pay and $20 is the commission per computer sold.

Step-by-step explanation:

Claire is a salesperson who sells computers and her total pay P, on a day when she sells x computers is comprised of a base pay plus a commission for each computer sold.

To represent Claire's total pay with an equation, we recognize that she makes a base pay of $80 each day regardless of her sales, which is a fixed amount, and a commission of $20 for each computer she sells, which is a variable amount that changes with the number of computers sold.

The total pay P can be expressed as the sum of her base pay and the total commission from all computers sold that day. Since she makes $20 for each computer, her total commission is 20 times the number of computers sold. The equation representing Claire's total pay is:

P = $80 + ($20 × x)
Where:
P is the total pay,
x is the number of computers sold.

This fits the standard form of a linear equation y = mx + b, where b is the base pay (y-intercept) and m is the commission per computer (slope).