Question

You brought 5 cakes to the school dance and you want to make sure there’s enough cake for everyone.

Here’s a formula for this scenario:
X=5y/a

X = number of people at the dance
Y=number of slices per cake
A=number of slices each person will eat.

Rewrite the formula to determine how many slices you should cut from each cake.

Answer 1

We basically want to solve the equation for y.

First of all, multiply both sides by a:

$ax = 5y$

Then, divide both sides by 5:

$\dfrac{ax}{5} = y$

And there you go! Note that this could have been done in one single step, multiplying both sides by a/5.