Need Help Coming Up With An Equation

D

DaniMarie

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Oct 15, 2013
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A woman with an hourly wage of $7.65 working 40 hours a week with no overtime pays a federal income tax of $754 for the standard deduction with three exemptions. How many days did she work to pay her federal income tax? Assume she works 8 hours a day.

I am having a hard time knowing where to begin. I know that I need to find how many days she worked, but I am not sure how to create an equation with this information. There is a lot of numbers given. Do they all need to be in the equation?
 
DaniMarie said:
A woman with an hourly wage of $7.65 working 40 hours a week with no overtime pays a federal income tax of $754 for the standard deduction with three exemptions. How many days did she work to pay her federal income tax? Assume she works 8 hours a day.

I am having a hard time knowing where to begin. I know that I need to find how many days she worked, but I am not sure how to create an equation with this information. There is a lot of numbers given. Do they all need to be in the equation?
Click to expand...

How much money does she earn per day? = D = 7.65 * 8

How many days she would need to work to earn $754? = 754/D = ?
 
DaniMarie said:
A woman with an hourly wage of $7.65 working 40 hours a week with no overtime pays a federal income tax of $754 for the standard deduction with three exemptions. How many days did she work to pay her federal income tax? Assume she works 8 hours a day.

I am having a hard time knowing where to begin. I know that I need to find how many days she worked, but I am not sure how to create an equation with this information. There is a lot of numbers given. Do they all need to be in the equation?
Click to expand...
It's not a particularly well worded question. The number given for income tax is (presumably) the amount of tax due for a year so the question simply is asking is how many days of her wages are taken by the federal government through the income tax. The question, however, talks about hours, days, and weeks, never mentions a year, and gives a bunch of extraneous information about deductions and exemptions. So a large part of this problem involves figuring out what exactly is being asked. Problems in the real world are seldom clearly formulated so it's probably good to get used to interpreting problems that, are presented fuzzily.
 
DaniMarie said:
A woman with an hourly wage of $7.65 working 40 hours a week with no overtime pays a federal income tax of $754 for the standard deduction with three exemptions. How many days did she work to pay her federal income tax? Assume she works 8 hours a day.

I am having a hard time knowing where to begin. I know that I need to find how many days she worked, but I am not sure how to create an equation with this information. There is a lot of numbers given. Do they all need to be in the equation?
Click to expand...
To state the question more simply:

"How many days must she work to earn $754?"

See the reply by Subhotosh Kahn:
How much money does she earn per day? = D = 7.65 * 8

How many days she would need to work to earn $754? = 754/D = ?
Click to expand...
 
Denis said:
Hmmm...ya...OK...but why would a college freshman
be asked to perform a simple division...
Click to expand...

I'm not terribly sure. I'm only in Math 112 though, and when Khan explained it it did seem very simple. Maybe it was as Jeff said about learning to work with the unclear wording? I just know I was terribly confused. I couldn't figure out why I needed to know what her deductions were.
 
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