helping son

Good evening, my son is struggling with his algebra, I am not able to help him due to my high school education limits. What i was hoping for would be for someone to help me answer this question that way i could look at his answer and see how they compare and try to explain were he went wrong. Also I wanted to know if these online pay tutoring sites are on the level and safe Thanks so much.
Question a talent show sells 805 tickets in advance the student tickets are $3 ea. the adult tickets are $4 ea.total receipts are $1740 how many of each ticket was sold

Hi Deidei:

There are different ways to solve this problem. I'll show you one set-up.

We're asked to find how many adults tickets were sold. We're also asked to find how many student tickets were sold.

If we knew how many adult tickets were sold, we could easily calculate the number of student tickets by subtacting the adult tickets from the total tickets.

So, let's first find how many adult tickets were sold.

Pick a symbol to represent this unknown number of tickets. I'll pick x.

Write it down:

x = the number of adult tickets sold

Now we can write an expression that represents the number of student tickets sold.

805 - x = the number of student tickets sold

Does this make sense, so far?

To find the value of x, we use the money information to write an equation.

The revenue from selling the adult tickets is expressed by multiplying the number of tickets by their price; the talent show collected $4 for each adult ticket sold.

4x = the revenue from selling all of the adult tickets

Likewise, we can write an expression for the money collected for the student tickets; they each cost $3.

3(805 - x) = the revenue from selling all of the student tickets

The sum of these two revenues is given, so we write an equation.

4x + 3(805 - x) = 1740

That's the set-up. Your son should already know how to solve equations like this.

Once he finds x (the number of adult tickets), he can subtract it from 805 to find the number of student tickets.

Let us know, if more help or clarification is needed. When replying, please post whatever work that your son can do, or try to explain why he's stuck, so that we might determine where to continue helping.

Cheers ~ Mark

PS: I cannot recommend paying for online tutoring because there are so many good sites available for free. If somebody wants to pay to get more personalized service, then I recommend that they spend their money on a local tutor who can meet face-to-face.

Thank you this will be a big help, the main issue is he try's to get the answer the shortest way, he's in middle school and this is an advance program. I'm so proud of him, but he starting to feel like a failure because he can't remmeber the various formula's needed to work out the problem. It's frustraing for me being old school and not understanding all this new educational process's. This is importan for him becuse if his grades do not come up he will ne reomved from the program. Thanks again

The problem as posted is wrong.

Question a talent show sells 805 tickets in advance the student tickets are $3 ea. the adult tickets are $4 ea.total receipts are $1740 how many of each ticket was sold?

If allthe tickets (805) were sold at the cheapest price ($3) - the revenue would be $2415!!

Higher than the reported revenue($1740) - somebody must be stealing money!!!!!

Good catch, Subhotosh.

Perhaps somebody's finger hit the "1" key instead of the "2" key.

This exercise makes sense, if the total revenue is $2,740.