Question

A total of 524 tickets were sold for the school play. They were either adult tickets or student tickets. The number of student tickets sold was three times the number of adult tickets sold. How many adult tickets were sold? show your work

Answer 1

Let the number of adult tickets be x.
The number of student tickets=3x
Total number of tickets sold=524
3x+x=524
4x=524
x=524/4
x=131 tickets
Ans: 131 adult tickets were sold.

Answer 2

131

Explanation:

We can represent the above information using the following equations:

s = 3a (the number of student tickets sold was three times the number of adult tickets)

t = 524 (the total number of tickets sold)

t = s + a (the total number of tickets is the number of student tickets (s) plus the number of adult tickets (a)

Using the above information, we can write the following equation in which we substitute 3a for s and 524 for t to have only one variable (a) and solve for a (the number of adult tickets):

t = s + a

524 = 3a + a

524 = 4a

131 =a (131 adult tickets were sold for the school play)

Although the question does not ask us to do so, we could also find the number of student tickets sold using our formula and solution above:

s = 3a

s = 3(131)

s = 393 (the number of student tickets sold)

We can then check our answer:

t = s + a

524 = 393 + 131

And we're all done! Hope this helps!!