Question

A bike and skate shop rents bikes for $21 per day and pairs of skates for $20 per day. To remain viable, the shop needs to make at least $362 per day from bike and skate rentals combined. If they rent twice as many bikes as they do pairs of skates, what is the least number of pairs of skates they need to rent each day to make their minimum?

Answer 1

The first step to solving this problem is to write an equation to express the parameters of the problem. The equation is expressed as this:

$62x = 362$

You can arrive at this equation by taking the ratio of 2 bike rentals and 1 skate rental and adding up the sum of all the purchases.

$21 \times 2 + 20 = 62$

This makes x equal to making 2 bike rentals and 1 skate rental. If we solve the original equation for x, the result is 5.838. Since we need to be above 362 dollars, we can round up to x = 6. This translates to 12 bike rentals and 6 skate rentals. Finally, we arrive at the answer of 6 skate rentals.