Alve. . Tia has 25 china figures in her collection. The horse figures cost $2
each, and the cat figures cost $1 each. She paid $39 for all the figures in
the collection. How many horses and how many cats does she have?
Equations:
Solution:

For the equations let h represent horses and c represent cats.

The # of horses + the # of cats= 25, so the first equation would be h+c=25

$2(# of horses) + $1(# of cats)= $39, so the second equation would be 2h+c=$39

Get one of the variables in the first equation by itself, so I subtracted c from each side to get h=25-c

Plug that equation into the second equation for the variable h like this, 2(25-c) + c= $39. Solve this using order of operations and you get c=$11. Since the cats cost $1 each, then you know that there must be 11 cat figures. There are 25 figures total, so 25-11= 14 horses.

So there are 11 cats and 14 horses