Question: 'Gavin agrees to buy a 6-month package deal of monthly gym passes, and in turn receives a 15% discount. Write an algebraic expression to represent the total cost of the monthly passes with the discount, if x represents the cost of each monthly pass.
Answer: x(6) - .15
So therefore the terms would be 6x , .15 or is it x, 6, and .15?
Extra Question: How would you properly write a 'discount' E.G: 25% discount. Wouldn't it be .25?
I'm not sure if I did that correctly so can anyone confirm please that I did? If not can you please explain how to solve these types of problems? These word problems are really confusing for me.
In general, a discount written as a percentage, i.e. a $25\%$ discount, signifies subtracting $25\%$ of the total cost from the total cost, leaving you with $75\%$ of the total cost.
So the price that you pay is $100\% - n\%$ of the total price, where $n$ is the discount as a percentage.
In the case of your problem, Gavin receives a $15\%$ discount, so he pays $85\%$ of the total price. To find $85\%$ of the total price, simply multiply the total price by $0.85$. (Note that this should answer your last question.)
The total price Gavin would pay (with no discount) is equal to the monthly rate, $x$, multiplied by the number of months, $6$. This would be $6x$
Therefore, Gavin pays $0.85\left(6x\right) = 5.1x$.
The only thing you really did wrong was subtract a flat $0.15$ rather than subtracting $0.15$ times the subtotal. Also, in reference to your last question, you would pay $0.75$ times the original price in the event of a $25\%$ discount, as explained above.