Lucy had $72, which is nine times as much money as xavier had. how much money did xavier have? select the correct solution method below, representing xavier's money with x.

Alright. To do this we can take one of two ways. The way the problem seems to want to do it is with algebra. Let’s do that first.

In algebra, we always want to write out what we do know, then make a plan to solve for what we don’t know.

What we do know:

-Lucy had 72 dollars
-Lucy had 9 times more money than Xavier


What we don’t know:
-How much money Xavier had.

Let’s make a plan to solve for what we don’t know.

1. Put What we don’t know as a variable
2. Understand the problem
3. Write equation
4. Write formal equation
5. Solve for answer

Alright, let’s start with step one.

We don’t know how much money Xavier has. In the final equation, we don’t want to write all those words, so let’s put the variable as “x”.

Step two

Let’a understand the problem. We need to find out what number multiplied by 9 is 72.

Step three

Let’s write an easy to understand equation

9 times x(how much money Xavier has) is equal to 72.

Step four

Let’s write the formal equation

9x=72

Step 5

Let’s solve the equation. To get x by itself, we need to divide by 9 on both sides, since it is the opposite of multiplying.

9x/9=72/9

X=8

So, your answer is Xavier has 8 dollars.

The other method is to simply divide 72 by 9, since the problem is asking to multiply.

72/9

I still got 8, which is he same answer.


Hope this helped! Comment if you have any questions! :)