Question

Andre and Priya are tracking the number of steps they walk. Andre records that he can walk 6000 steps in 50 minutes. Priya writes the equation y=118x, where y is the number of steps and x is the number of minutes she walks, to describe her step rate. This week, Andre and Priya each walk for a total of 5 hours. Who walks more steps?

Answer 1

Andre walks more steps than Priya.

To find out who many steps each one of them walks in a week, we have to carry out different calculations starting with Andre.

                 Calculation for number of steps taken by Andre

Andre takes 6000 steps in 50 minutes. We can use this information to scale up his number of steps over a period of 5 hours(300 minutes.). The quickest way to do this calculation, is to notice that there are 6 different 50 minute segments in 300 minutes. This means that the number of steps taken in 5 hours is $6\times 6000=36000$ steps.

Another way to do this calculations is to use proportions

$6000=50\\x=300\\=>50x=300\times6000=1800000\\=>x=36000$.

Andre takes 36000 steps that week.

                 Calculation for number of steps taken by Priya

The number of steps taken by Priya is given by the is given by the function $y=118x$ where $x$ is the time in minutes. Priya walks for a total of 5 hours or 300 minutes. We calculate the number of steps she takes as shown below,

$y=118x\\y=118\times 300\\y=35400.$

Priya takes a total of 35400 steps.

Since  36000 steps is greater than 35400 steps, we conclude that Andre walks more steps than Priya.