An author works on a new book and after writing a few chapters, begins a new plan to write 600 words per day. On the fifth day o
f working on this plan, 4,500 words have been written. If the equation y = 600x + b represents the total number of words the author has written, y, based on the number of days, x, since the new plan was started, what is the value of b?
1,500 Explanation In y=600x + b the y is the total words and the x is the amount of days. We have the days (5 days) and we have the total amount of words. So we have to find b which is what they started off with. So what we can do is try 600words multiplied by 5 days. We should get 3000. So now we known in the span of 5 days they wrote 3000 words. Now we can subtract 4,500 and 3000, which gives us 1500. The author started off with 1,500 words. To check we just add the info in y=600(5)+1500 which gives us 4,500 .