"Published in Newark, California, USA"
Milagros bought a number of baskets of calamansi for ₱ 60. She sells them at a gain of ₱ 0.50 a basket and has as her profit the amount received for the last 6 baskets sold. How much did she pay per basket of calamansi?
Solution:
The given word problem is about money and investment problem in which buying, selling, and profit are involved. Let's analyze the given word problem as follows:
Let x = be the number of baskets of calamansi
y = be the price or cost of calamansi per basket
If the word problem says "Milagros bought a number of baskets of calamansi for ₱ 60.", then the working equation which is her capital or investment is
If the word problem says "She sells them at a gain of ₱ 0.50 a basket...", then the working equation which is her sales is
If the word problem says "....and has as her profit the amount received for the last 6 baskets sold.", then the working equation which is her profit is
If you put all equations together, then the final working equation is
But
Hence, the above equation becomes
By using the completing the square method, the value of x which is the number of baskets of calamansi is
We need to choose the positive sign since we want to get the number of baskets of calamansi.
Substitute the value of x to the first given equation, we have
Therefore, the cost of a basket of calamansi is ₱ 2.00.