Planning Your Solution

Algebra 1 · Axiom Academy

Planning Your Solution: Concert Tickets You know the total bill — now work backward to the price of one ticket. The order you undo things in is the whole trick. You and 3 friends grabbed 4 tickets to the show online, plus one flat 10 service fee for the whole order. The bill came to 230 . If every ticket costs the same amount t , then: Tempting shortcut: 4 tickets, 230 — just split it 4 ways, right? Hit Play and watch what that does to the fee. The fee was the last thing added, so it comes off first . Then undo the ×4. Click the inverse operations in the right order and watch each one act on the order. To unwrap a multi-step equation, undo the operations in reverse order — strip off what was added or subtracted last , then undo the multiply or divide. It's the mirror image of the order of operations, and it's how you'd work back from a total to one price, one rate, or one unknown — at the box office, on a phone bill, or splitting any tab.

This is the written version of the interactive lesson above. See the full Algebra 1 course.