Question

A waiter served 12 customers at lunch. Then he worked the dinner shift and served 5 new customers per hour. Write an equation that represents the number of customers the waiter served over lunch and dinner. Identify the x and y variables and explain the meaning of the slope and y-intercept.

Answer 1

The question is asking to find an equation of how many customers the waiter served.

Given: 12 customers at lunch; 5 per hour for dinner

Find: number of customers served at lunch AND dinner

We use variables for this, x and y. A general equation is usually y=ax+b, where y is the solution, x is the variable, and a and b are numbers.

Knowing this information, since it is already given that 12 customers were served, the equation turns into y=ax+12

Additionally, since we don't know how many hours she worked, we can use that as a variable. y=5x+12

x=how many hours the waiter worked at dinner

y=overall hours the waiter worked at both lunch and dinner

slope=5, means customers are going up 5 every hour

y-intercept=12, the given/starting point on the y-axis