Question

Coach Dan has decided to surprise the athletic department's team members with new hats. Hats are sold in boxes of 18. If there are a total of 168 team members he would like to buy hats for, how many boxes would he have to order? Explain your reasoning.

Answer 1

10 boxes

Explanation:

Let's say Coach Dan orders b boxes.

Then since there are 18 hats in each box, we will have a total of 18b hats.

We would like to buy enough for 168 team members, so let's set 18b equal to 168 and solve for b:

18b = 168

b = 168/18 = 9.33

Well, we clearly need at least 9 boxes, but it's not possible to have 0.33 of a box. Thus, we must order one more box for a total of 10 boxes.