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Elena has written 3 sports books for kids. One book is about soccer, one is about baseball, and one is about basketball. Elena has sold a total of 3,017 of the books in local bookstores. She sold 3 times as many copies of the soccer book as the baseball book. She sold the same number of copies of the basketball book as the soccer book. How many copies of the soccer book has she sold?

User KorreyD
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1 Answer

3 votes

Answer:

1293 soccer books

Explanation:

The tricky part about questions like this is: how do I assign variables to the three types of book?

You get a clue from the sentence, "She sold 3 times as many copies of the soccer book as the baseball book." The number of soccer books is being described by referring TO the number of baseball books. Pick a variable and assign it to the item being REFERRED TO!

x = number of baseball books

Then 3x = number of soccer books. The number of basketball books is the same, so 3x = number of basketball books. Here's the list...

x = number of baseball books

3x = number of soccer books

3x = number of basketball books

The total of these is 3017, so

x + 3x + 3x = 3017

7x = 3017

x = 431

Ah! But don't forget to look back at the question: it asks for the number of SOCCER books! That's 3x, so 3(431) = 1293.

User Chrjs
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