1)
To find out the profit we must subtract the expense from the income. We have both functions, we know that the expense is
And the income
The profit will be (income - expense), therefore:
The profit is given by
2)
Now we must discover the ticket price they would break even, the break-even point happens when the income and the expense are the same, then (expense = income)
See that, it's the same as the profit, we knew that the profit was
The break-even happens when p = 0.
Now we must solve that quadratic function
Using the quadratic formula
Where a = -1, b = 80, c = -500.
If we simplify the expression
Therefore they would break-even at
3)
The max profit will be the vertex of the profit function (parabola), the vertex of a parabola is
Here, the values of "x" is the ticket price and the "y" values are the profit.
Using the x coordinate to find out the vertex ticket price we have:
Remember that a = -1, b = 80, c = -500, therefore
They reach the maximum profit when the ticket price is $40
4)
To find out the maximum profit we can use x = 40 in the profit formula
Put x = 40
The maximum profit is $1100
5)
If we want a determined profit and find the ticket price, we must take the profit function:
And solve that function for "x", which is the same to discover the ticket price for a generic profit.
So, we will solve the quadratic for a generic value of p:
Now, we have a = -1, b = 80, c = -500 - p.
Using again the quadratic formula, we can solve it for x
Therefore, given a profit value, the ticket price will be
Examples:
Let's suppose that the profit is $600, we just have to put p = 600 and simplify the expression, some of them may be hard to find by hand so use a calculator. The "strange" part here is: there are two values that the ticket can be
Let's put p = 600 and solve
Therefore for p = 600 the ticket price and be 62.360 or 17.639.
Let's solve it using the quadratic function to check if our result is correct:
We must have zero on one side, then
And now we solve using the quadratic formula
If you put that result in decimal we get