Expert: Bobby Soltani - 10/21/2004

Question
7/8 of the tickets had been sold and there were 560 tickets left. How many tickets are printed? thanks

Answer
Hi Chelsie,

Since 7/8 of the tickets have been sold, that means that 1/8 of the tickets is equal to 560.  When you have a problem like this you can replace "of" with multiply and "is" with "=".  For example: 1/2 of the crowd(c) is 10,000 people.  We can write this as

(1/2)*c = 10000

Then we solve for c by multiplying both sides by 2

c = 20000.

That is, if 1/2 the crowd is 10000 people, the entire crowd is 20000.

For our problem, we have 1/8 of the tickets(t) is equal to 560 or

(1/8)*t = 560

multiply both sides by 8

t = 4480.

So, there are a total of 4480 tickets printed.
I hope this explanation helps you.  Please let me know if you have any questions.

Bobby