A bat and a ball costs $1.10 in total.

Question

I’m sure you have heard of this math problem. No matter how many times someone explained this to me I still feel confused. Can someone explain in the simplest way possible?

In: Mathematics

Answer 1

This is an algebra problem.

Bat = x
ball = y
So lets convert the words to a math expression. price of both together is $1.10 which looks like:

x+y = 1.1

And then the bat is the price of the ball plus $1 which looks like this:

x = y+1

So we have two unknown values and two equations. If we put the second equation into the first then we can eliminate one variable and solve.

(y+1) + y = 1.1

2*y + 1 = 1.1

2*y = .1

y = .05

So the ball costs 5 cents. Now you can enter this number into either equation to find out how much the bat costs (it’s $1.05).