Word Problem Wednesday: The Math Of Tipping

What is the tastiest way to use your math skills? Our vote goes to ordering and paying for pizza! From deciding how much pizza to get per person, to figuring out the time it will take to get there and how much to pay and tip the delivery person, math is involved in every step of this delicious process!

We invite you to practice elementary math skills such as money-math, percentages, rounding, multiplication and division, addition and subtraction as you work out the solution to this week’s word problem challenge.

Question: Jessie orders a pizza that costs her $14.50. She tips the pizza delivery person 15% and rounds up to the next dollar. By how much did she round her tip? (Jessie lives in Delaware, where pizza isn’t taxed.)

Take your time figuring it out, and don’t forget to come back tomorrow to check your solution against ours!

Solution: To find a 15% tip, we multiply: 14.50 × 0.15 = 2.175, which rounds to $2.18. If we round up to the next dollar, we get $3.00, which is 3.00 – 2.18 = .82 or 82¢ more.