more math

[goffbb]

Mary made 10% more than Susan before susan's 80 cent per hour raise to $11.00 per hour. How much does mary make per hour?

[Knight]

Mary made 10% more than Susan before susan's 80 cent per hour raise to $11.00 per hour. How much does mary make per hour?

Again, the key to solving this, or any other word problem is translating from Math-speak to English.

Remember that math majors don't speak english!!! They can fake it really well, but it's not their native tongue.

What this problem is really doing is giving you two peices of information.

The most important thing we have is that we know exactly how much money that Susan makes, now, and before her raise. If she makes 11.00 per hour now, then she made 10.20 per hour before the eighty cent raise.

We also know that Mary made 10% more than susan before the raise, or when susan was making 10.20 per hour.

Now, lets say this as one of those math foreigners would:

Susan's Pay (S) was her current pay (11.00) minus eighty Cents (0.80)

S = 11.00 - 0.80

or

S = 10.20. Simple enough.

Mary's Pay (M) is Susans pay (S) plus 10% of Susans Pay (S * 0.10):

M = S + (S*0.10)

Since we know that Susan made 10.20 at this point, we'll fill in the numbers in place of the symbols, and get:

M = 10.20 + (10.20*0.10)

which simplifies to:

M = 10.20 + 1.02

and finally to:

M = 11.22

Which tells us that even after the raise, poor Susan is making twenty two cents an hour less than Mary, and is probably doing most of the work to boot.