Can Anyone Help Me Solve This? Not Quite Sure How To...

[Elena_W]

Jim purchased a set of clubs for $500 less 40%, 16% and two thirds%. Expenses are 20% of regular selling price and the required profit is 17.5% of the regular selling price. The store decided to change the regular selling price so that it could offer a 36% discount of 54% of the new regular selling price. What operating profit or loss was realised on the sets sold at the end of the season?

[Buenchico]

Have you missed something out there? The figure of 16-&-two-thirds % appears in your text with absolutely no explanation as to what it refers to.

[Cloverjo]

Did Jim buy three sets of golf clubs, all at different prices?
Two thirds per cent is meaningless.
By "expenses", do you mean cost price?

[Buenchico]

Just an additional thought:

The timing of your question (and your use of dollars in it) suggests that you're in the USA. This website is based in the UK and, while we're happy to help people from all over the world (and mathematics is a universal language anyway), there simply aren't many of us around at (approaching) 3am.

If you're after an answer in a hurry, you might get a quicker response on a US-based website, such as one of these:
https://answers.yahoo.com/

http://www.answerbag.com/

[Calibax]

and what does '... a 36% discount of 54% of the new regular selling price' mean?

[Buenchico]

I'm not even sure who Jim is!

I started off thinking that he was a customer of the store but, upon trying to make sense of the question, decided that it was more likely that he was the store's buyer.

Mathematics is a language of precision. Just a tiny slip of the pen can render it meaningless and (even allowing for a few possible typos from Elena) that question is anything but precise, which renders it impossible to provide the requisite precision in the answer (or, indeed, any answer at all!).

[Jackdaw33]

Oh, come on, Chico and Calibax.the answer is simple. It's two thirds of five eighths of f*** all.

[Elena_W]

nope its all there, i didn't miss any part of the question

[Elena_W]

oops I actually did end up making a few typos .Jim purchased a set of clubs for $500 less 40%, 16% and two thirds%. Expenses are 20% of regular selling price and the required profit is 17.5% of the regular selling price. The store decided to change the regular selling price so that it could offer a 36% discount without affecting its margin. At the end of season, the unsold sets were advertised at a discount of 54% of the regular new selling price. What operating profit or loss was realized on the sets sold at the end of the season?

[Buenchico]

. . . in which case, please tell whoever set the question to check it for typos!

In the meantime, stop worrying about it and do something more interesting instead!

I try to answer questions across a wide range of topics here but mathematics is my specialist field. I've got a university honours degree in it, I've contributed to books on it (with one standard proof bearing my name after I improved the way that it had been done for centuries), I've written articles on it, I've taught it up to the equivalent of your Grade 12 and I've represented the UK at an international conference on maths education in Australia. So, when I tell you that the question you've been given is TOTALLY MEANINGLESS, I hope that you'll be prepared to take my word for it ;-)

[Buenchico]

Oops!

Crossed posts!
(I was doing more important things, such as feeding four hungry cats, in the middle of my post!).

However your '16 and two thirds per cent' STILL appears without explanation, so the question is STILL meaningless!!!

Sorry!

[Elena_W]

that's alright, but i do know that the 16 and 2/3 % turns into (1-166666) times by $500, so i guess ill try to take it from there, thanks though.

[Cloverjo]

Elena, even if we take your "16% and two thirds%" to mean (16 + 2/3) %, your question still has the phrase "Jim purchased a set of clubs for $500 less 40%, (16 + 2/3)%". It's still meaningless.