My friend Asha was throwing a very grand party and wanted to borrow from me 100 wine glasses. I decided to send them through my boy servant Harish.
Just to give an incentive to Harish to deliver the glasses intact I offered him $3 for every glass delivered safely and threatened to forfeit $9 for every glass he broke.
On settlement, Harish received $240 from me. How many glasses did Harish break?
Answer
Harish delivered 95 glasses intact and broke 5 glasses.
Let G be the number of glasses delivered intact. So 3G is the amount earned for delivering the glasses intact. Let B be the number of glasses broken. So 9B is the amount forfeited.
We can come up with 2 equations:
3G – 9B = 240
G + B = 100
Solving the simultaneous equations will give G=95, B=5.