Question

For a small party of 12 people the caterer offered a choice of a steak dinner for $12.00 per meal or a chicken dinner for $10.50 per meal. The final cost for the meals was $138.00. How many of each meal was ordered?

Answer 1

Assuming one meal has been ordered for each person, let x and y represent the number of steaks and the number of chickens ordered, respectively. Then, we get the following system of linear equations.      x + y = 12               (Eq. 1)      12x + 10.5y = 138   (Eq. 2) If we plug y = 12 - x, which is from Eq. 1, into Eq. 2,      12x + 10.5(12 - x) = 138      1.5x + 126 = 138      1.5x = 12      x = 8 and plug x = 8 into Eq. 1, we get y = 4. So, they ordered 8 steaks and 4 chickens.