Video Transcript
Visitors to a fun fair must buy tickets to go on the rides. Tickets can be bought in different packages: three tickets, one pound 40; five tickets, two pounds 65; 14 tickets, six pounds 99. Which ticket package is the best value for money? You must show your working out.
When thinking about value for money, we do have two different ways to answer. The first method is to scale the values up. In this case, we would find a common multiple for three, five, and 14. However, that’s going to be quite a large number here, so it’s not actually a particularly nice method to use.
The alternative method is to scale down. In this context, that’s to consider the cost of one ticket in each package. Let’s see what this looks like.
In the first package, three tickets cost one pound 40. We can scale this down to find the value of one ticket by dividing by three. One pound 40 divided by three is 0.46 recurring. That’s zero pounds and 46 pence point six recurring. Now whilst this isn’t legal tender, we can leave it in this form because we’re just comparing it here.
In our second package, five tickets cost two pounds 65. This time, we’ll scale down to find the cost of one ticket by dividing by five. Two pounds 65 divided by five is 0.53, or 53 pence.
Let’s consider the final package. Here 14 tickets cost six pounds 99. We can divide through by 14 this time to get the cost of one ticket. This time, that’s 0.49 recurring, again not legal tender but absolutely fine for comparison purposes.
By doing this, we can see that the cheapest cost for one ticket is in the first package. Around 46 pence is cheaper than 53 pence and roughly 49 pence. This means buying three tickets for the one pound 40 is the best value for money.
