Question

Shelly and Terrence completed a different number of tasks in a game. Shelly earned 90 points on each task. Terrence's total points were 20 less than Shelly's total. The expression below shows Terrence's total points in the game: 90x − 20 What does the factor x of the first term of the expression represent?

Answer 1

I'm thinking maybe x is supposed to represent the number of tasks completed because it states Shelly earned 90 points on each task.  Then when put together it may look like this, let's say there are 4 tasks= Ex.90 times the 4 tasks minus 20 points which would total the points Terrence's has earned. So i believe x is the total tasks. Hope I didn't make it confusing...

Answer 2

x is the number of tasks

It says Shelly earned 90 points on each task. So the equation shows Shelly getting 90 points times the number of tasks (x) that she did. Then they simply subtract 20 from the total to get Terrence's total amount of points.