Question

(02.02)

Maya and Sally were the two finalists in a singing competition. The person with the most votes from the audience was chosen as the winner. Sally received 25% of the total votes and lost by 62,500 votes. No person in the audience was allowed to vote more than once. The equation below represents this situation, where y is the total number of votes cast and x is the number of votes Maya received:

x − 62,500 = 0.25y

If a total of 125,000 people voted, how many votes did Maya receive? Do not enter comma for placeholder values.

Answer 1

If there are 125,000 votes, and Sally received 25% of the votes, 125,000 divided by 4 equals 31,250 votes. Sally received 31250 votes. Now subtract 31,250 from 125,000 and you get 93,750. Maya received 93750 votes. To confirm your answer, 93,750-31,250=62,500