Question

February is sale month at the clothing store. All items are marked down 20 percent. If the sale price for a purse is $42, what was the price before the markdown?

Answer 1

According to the statement the item has been marked down 20%, write an equation for the sales price letting x be the original price and writing the percentage in decimal form.

$SP=x\cdot(1-0.2)$

if you have the sales price find the value of x

$\begin{gathered} 42=0.8x \\ x=\frac{42}{0.8} \\ x=52.5 \end{gathered}$

the purse had an original value of $52.5