Write a Let" statement for the unknown, write an equation, and solve the equation. 11. Jane bought a number of records for $7 each. She then spent $3 more for a poster. If she spent a total of $24, how many records did she buy?

So let's start with what we know. Each record is $7, the poster is $3 and one poster was bought. Also we know $24 was spent. What we don't know is how many records was bought. The numbers are small enough that we can count out each number of records to find the answer, so let's do that and then I'll show how to easily reason it out for any combination of numbers.

For one record plus the poster 10 dollars would have been spent. For two records it's 17 and you can keep going from there. Another way to look at it is taking 24 and subtracting 3 for the poster and that specifically is how much was spent on records, so 21. From there do the same counting by 7 for each record.

If the problem had said something super large, like $864 was spent on an unknown number of records and one poster it would be much harder to use those ways. If we set up an equation we can find the answer with some basic math. if we have the number of records represented by x, since we don't know it, then we will have 7x+3=24 or in my example 7x+3=864. it is basically saying x number of records for 7 dollars plus one poster for three dollars equals 24 or 864. From here just get x by itself in the equation.

For my example here is how I would handle that. First subtract three from both sides to get 7x=861. Then just divide both sides by 7, and then we have x=123 or 123 records were bought. Just follow the same method for your problem, and ry and find how you would take similar problems and make them into equations like this.