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If 12 pairs of socks sell for $5.79, how much is one pair of socks?

Answer 1

Ethan Adkins

Approximately equal to #0.5# cents.

Divide #5.79# by #12# to find the answer or you can use a proportion to calculate it (really helpful for me).

First, I put #12# over #5.79# so #12/5.79#. So we have socks/costs. You can have costs/socks. It does not matter.

They asked for how much is one pair of socks, we can write

#"12 pair of socks"/($5.79) = "1 pair of socks" / x#

Here #x# represents the cost of #1# pair of socks. It is good to use a variable when you have an unknown value.

Then we can do cross-multiplication. We have

#12x = $5.79#

Solving for #x# gives you

#x = $0.4825#

or approximately equal to #0.5# cents (do not forget the unit).

You can also search Google about cross-multiplication or use Khan Academy for more useful resources.

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Answer 2

Ethan Adkins

To find the price of one pair of socks, divide the total cost by the number of pairs of socks.

$5.79 ÷ 12 pairs =$ 0.4825 per pair

So, one pair of socks costs approximately $0.48.

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Answer from HIX Tutor

When evaluating a one-sided limit, you need to be careful when a quantity is approaching zero since its sign is different depending on which way it is approaching zero from. Let us look at some examples.