Mary's Ski Boot Adventure
Written by: Caitlyn Calabrese
Every year Mary goes skiing with her family. This year, Mary did chores around the house and saved up all of her money so that she could buy herself new ski equipment. She saved a total of 1,200 dollars. She had already bought a pair of skiis for 450 dollars. One day after school, she went to the store with her friend Ken to buy new ski boots. She allotted 350 dollars from her total savings for this purchase.
After looking for quite a while, Mary found the perfect pair of boots. They originally cost 460 dollars, but were on sale for 30% off. Mary wondered what the sale price was. It seemed like a pretty good deal!
Ken remembered learning this in school and was able to help Mary out. He told Mary, "To find out how much the boots cost now, we need to figure out what the discount is by finding 30% of 460, and then subtract the discount from 460."
"How do we figure out what 30% of 460 is?" asked Mary.
"Easy," said Ken. "You turn 30% into a decimal by dividing by 100, or just by moving the decimal two places to the left, so you get .3. Then, you multiply that by 460."
Mary exclaimed, "Oh yeah, I remember this!" Using the calculator on her cell phone, she found 30% of 460.
".3 times 460 equals 138," she told Ken.
"Now, we just need to subtract the discount from the original price."
Again, Mary put the equation into her calculator.
"460 minus 138 equals 322 dollars!" she said.
"Wow Mary, that's a great deal! And you stayed within your budget of 350 dollars!" said Ken.
"Now, let's go skiing!" said Mary.
Sources:
http://www.icoachmath.com/math_dictionary/Discount.html
http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/sale-price
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/budget
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/allotted
Illustrations from:
http://janabouc.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/sketching-at-rei-recreation-equipment-inc/
http://www.school-clip-art.com
http://school.discoveryeducation.com/clipart/