Answer:
D 280 adult tickets and 174 student tickets were sold
Step-by-step explanation:
When the answers differ by a lot as they do here, you can get an idea of the correct one by looking at the average ticket cost:
$1154/(454 tickets) ≈ $2.54 per ticket
That is more than the average of adult and student ticket prices, (3.50+1.00)/2 = 2.25, so more than half of the tickets sold must be adult tickets.
Only one answer choice matches: choice D.
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In problems such as this, the answer can be found using the ratio computed as above.
adult tickets = (total tickets) · ((average ticket price) - (student price))/(price difference)
= 454 · (2.54185 -1.00)/(2.50) = 280 . . . . . matches choice D
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Usual solution
Let a represent the number of adult tickets. Then revenue is ...
3.50a + 1.00(454-a) = 1154
2.50a = 700 . . . . . eliminate parentheses, subtract 454
a = 700/2.50 = 280 . . . adult tickets sold
