Question

Mary earns $15 per hour coaching and $9 per hour babysitting. She wants to earn at least $540 over the summer. Using those values and the variables given,write an inequality describing this constraint.

Answer 1

Mary wants to earn at least $540 over the summer from coaching and babysitting, which pay $15 and $9 per hour respectively. The inequality representing her constraint is 15x + 9y ≥ 540, where x is the number of coaching hours and y is the number of babysitting hours.

Step-by-step explanation:

Mary is trying to figure out how many hours she needs to work at two different jobs in order to earn at least $540 over the summer. To express this situation with an inequality, we can let x represent the number of hours she coaches and y represent the number of hours she babysits. Mary earns $15 per hour for coaching and $9 per hour for babysitting. The inequality that represents Mary's goal of earning at least $540 over the summer is:

15x + 9y ≥ 540

Here, 15x represents the income from coaching and 9y represents the income from babysitting. The ≥ symbol means 'is at least', so the left side of the inequality should be equal to or more than $540, which is Mary's earnings goal.