Question

You need to buy some chicken for dinner tonight. you found an ad showing that the store across town has it on sale for $3.29 a pound, which is cheaper than your usual neighborhood store, which sells it for $3.49 a pound. is it worth the extra drive?

Answer 1

yes, it's 20c cheaper than your neighborhood store.

Answer 2

Answer: The answer is probably not.

Explanation: The first thing that you need to do is identify how much chicken you will purchase for dinner. For this problem we are going to estimate that you will purchase five pounds of chicken. The chicken on the other side of town is on sale for .20/lb less than your normal store. In order to calculate the amount of savings you need to multiply 5 pounds x .20 savings = $1.00 savings for 5 pounds of chicken.

Now, knowing that you will save $1.00, you need to analyze the benefit to see if it is worth it for you to drive across town to purchase chicken. If you believe that the extra cost of transportation and your time to travel there is worth more than $1.00 then it is not worth the extra drive to save the 20 cents per pound.