Pilar is a salesperson at car company. Each car costs at least $15,000. For each car she sells, she gets 6% commission of the amount by which selling price exceeds $10,000. If Pilar sells a car at d dollars, which function gives her the commission in dollars on sale?
A) C(d)=0.06(d-10000)
B) C(d)=0.06(d-15000)
C) C(d)=0.06(10000-d)

Plugging in might help you think about this in a more concrete way. From what the question says, if Pilar sells a car for $18,000, for example, then we’d expect her to earn commission on $8,000—the amount of the car’s price above $10,000. A 6% commission on $8,000 is 0.06\times $8,000=$480. Which of the answer choices, when you plug in $18,000 for d, gives you $480?

Choice A is the only one that works.

The other way to think through this is to notice that all the choices have the same 0.06 in the beginning, so the 6% part of the problem is taken care of. Our job is to figure out which of the choices has the right thing in the parentheses. Which of those things will provide the amount that d, the selling price, exceeds $10,000? Well, translating the words into math, we’d have to say that “the amount d exceeds $10,000″ can be written as: d – 10,000.

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