Suppose you and your family which includes your wife and three children is getting ready for the ski season. You order pairs of Go Fast skis for everyone in your family and spend $2,000. How would you write an equation to solve for the price of one pair of Go Fast skis?

Well let us let x equal one pair of Go Fast skis. We would have 5x Go Fast skis because there are five members in the family. That should equal the total amount of ski cost or $2,000. So our equation is:

5x = 2,000

To solve for x, simply divide both sides by 5 to get x = 400. So each pair of Go Fast skis cost $400.

Let’s look at another type of problem you might encounter. Let’s say you bought one pair of Go Really Fast skis and a Go Fast bike for $1,100. The Go Fast bike costs $500 and you want to know how much the pair of Go Really Fast skis costs. Well, you can set up an equation for that to. The unknown quantity is the cost of the Go Really Fast skis, so we will call that x. That is added to the cost of the Go Fast skis to get the total cost, $1,100.

So our equation becomes:

x + 500 = 1,100.

To solve for x we must subtract 500 from both sides. Solving for x we get 600 meaning that Go Really Fast skis cost $600 and it is as simple as that!

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