During a three-day premiere, a theater must sell an average of 200 tickets per night to make a profit. For the first two nights, 206 and 185 tickets were sold. How many tickets must be sold for the third night for the theater to make a profit?


A) 197


B) 5


C) 131


D) 209

The total must be at least 600.

That is not an option??

Are you even reading the question??

Your reply to Ms Sue suggests that you are merely looking for the answer.

You want an average of 200
Your first day sales were good, there were 6 over your goal
your second day not so good, you were 15 short of the goal.

take it from there

To find out how many tickets must be sold for the third night for the theater to make a profit, we need to calculate the total number of tickets sold on the first two nights and then determine the average number of tickets sold per night.

Total number of tickets sold on the first two nights = 206 + 185 = 391

Average number of tickets sold per night = Total number of tickets sold / Number of nights = 391 / 2 = 195.5

To make a profit, the theater must sell an average of 200 tickets per night. Since 195.5 is less than 200, the theater needs to sell more tickets on the third night in order to reach the average profit target.

Let's calculate how many tickets are needed for the third night to reach the target average.

Total target number of tickets for three nights = Average number of tickets sold per night * Number of nights = 200 * 3 = 600

Total number of tickets already sold on the first two nights = 391

Number of tickets needed for the third night = Total target number of tickets - Total number of tickets already sold = 600 - 391 = 209

Therefore, the theater must sell 209 tickets on the third night to make a profit.

The correct answer is D) 209.