The Correct Answer and Explanation is:
The correct answer is 12.
To solve this problem, we first need to understand the terms of the sale. The promotion is “buy 4 pencils, get the 5th pencil FREE.” This means that every time the customer completes this deal, they acquire a group of five pencils in total. Within each of these groups, four pencils are paid for, and one pencil is given for free.
The customer needs a total of 60 pencils. Our goal is to figure out how many of these complete “buy 4, get 1 free” groups are contained within the total of 60 pencils. To find this, we can use division. We divide the total number of pencils the customer needs by the number of pencils in one full cycle of the sale.
The calculation is as follows:
60 total pencils ÷ 5 pencils per group = 12 groups.
This result of 12 tells us that the customer will complete the sale’s conditions exactly 12 times to get their 60 pencils. Since each of these 12 transactions includes one free pencil, we can determine the total number of free pencils by multiplying the number of groups by the number of free pencils per group.
12 groups × 1 free pencil per group = 12 free pencils.
Therefore, out of the 60 pencils the customer needs, 12 of them will be free. We can also verify this. If 12 pencils are free, then the customer must pay for the remaining 48 pencils (60 total pencils minus 12 free pencils). This works out perfectly with the sale, as 12 groups of 4 paid pencils each (12 × 4) also equals 48. The logic is consistent, confirming that the customer gets 12 pencils for free.
