Natalia paid $38.95 for three medium sized pizzas and a salad. Solve an equation to find the cost of one pizza,p, if Natalia paid $11.98 for the salad

ANSWER

The cost of each pizza is

[tex]8.99 \: dollars[/tex]

EXPLANATION

We were given that, Natalia paid $38.95 for three medium sized pizzas and a salad.

Let
[tex]p[/tex]
represent the cost of each pizza and

[tex]s [/tex]

be the price of a salad.

Then we can write the equation,

[tex]3p + s = 38.95...(1)[/tex]

But we were also told that Natalia paid $11.98 for a salad. This means the cost of a salad is $11.98.

This implies that,

[tex]s = 11.98...(2)[/tex]

We now put equation (2) into equation (1) to get,

[tex]3p + 11.98 = 38.95[/tex]

We now solve for p to obtain,

[tex]3p = 38.95 - 11.98[/tex]

This gives us,

[tex]3p = 26.97[/tex]

We divide through by 3 to get,

[tex]p = 8.99[/tex]

Therefore the cost of each pizza is $8.99.