SOLUTION: James is a salesperson for an electronics company. He may choose to receive $500 or 5% commission on his sales as payment for his work. How much does he need to sell to make the

Algebra ->  Percentage-and-ratio-word-problems -> SOLUTION: James is a salesperson for an electronics company. He may choose to receive $500 or 5% commission on his sales as payment for his work. How much does he need to sell to make the       Log On


   

Question 117860: James is a salesperson for an electronics company. He may choose to receive $500 or 5% commission on his sales as payment for his work. How much does he need to sell to make the 5% offer a better deal?
Answer by bucky(2189) About Me  (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
Let S represent the dollar value of the sales that James makes.
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You want to know when 5% of the value of those sales (decimal equivalent of 5% is 0.05) is the
equivalent of $500. 5% of a quantity is found by multiplying the quantity by 0.05. So in this
problem 5% of the sales value (S) is found by multiplying S by 0.05. So for this problem you
can write the equation:
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0.05%2AS+=+500
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To solve for S, divide both sides of this equation by 0.05. When you do that division,
the left side becomes just S and you have:
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S+=+500%2F0.05+
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You can get rid of the decimal point in the denominator by multiplying the fraction on
the right side by 100%2F100. When you do that the process is:
.

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This tells you that if James sells $10,000 of electronics equipment he will make $500 if he
gets a 5% commission. So if he expects to sell more that $10,000 worth of equipment, he
would be better off taking a commission of 5% rather than just taking $500 for his work.
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Hope this helps you to understand the problem and how to solve it.
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