Question

Working Two Jobs. Maggie has a job working in an office for $10 an hour and another job driving a tractor

pays $16 an hour. Maggie works at both jobs and earns $480 in one week.

Answer 1

x*$10 + y*$16 = $480

Explanation:

The question seems incomplete, and after a search online I've found a lot of similar questions with similar numbers, so I really can not be sure of which one is the complete question.

I suppose that we want to get a linear equation that describes the given situation:

Let's define two variables:

x = number of hours that Maggie works in the office (for $10 each)

y = number of hours that Maggie works driving a tractor (for $16 each).

Then the total amount of money that Maggie gets is:

x*$10 + y*$16

Now we know that she earns $480 per week, then we know that:

x*$10 + y*$16 = $480

This is a linear equation we wanted to get, where (just to be complete) we need to add the restrictions:

x ≥ 0

y ≥ 0

(this means that she can not work a negative number of hours).