What does the value 70 represent?

The number of people waiting in a line to buy tickets x minutes after a ticket booth opened is given by the expression 70−5x .

What does the value 70 represent?

A. the number of minutes it takes to sell all the tickets

B. the total number of tickets available

C. the number of people in the line when the ticket booth opened

D. the number of people who bought tickets every minute

1 Answer
Aug 23, 2017

C. the number of people in the line when the ticket booth opened

Explanation:

One easy way to answer this question is with a graph.
graph{70-5x [-63.6, 110.5, -12.3, 74.7]}

We know that by inputting a number of minutes, our output is the number of people in line. By treating this system of inputs and outputs as a function, we see that at 0 minutes, or when the ticket booth opens, our output is 70, so there are 70 people waiting in line.

The '5' is how many people are served in one minute.