1. Assume
that the maximum number of birds he can purchase is 200, since he does not have
space for more than that. Of course, he could purchase more and then release
them into the wild, but we don’t think that’s what your teacher has in mind!
2. One
option is to buy no birds at all, and keep the $250.
3. Since
chickens cost only $1 each, he could buy 200 chickens and have $50 left over.
4. Or he
could buy 125 ducklings and have no money left over.
5. So
there are lots of possibilities. The general formula would be given by c + 2d 250
and c + d 200,
where c is the number of chickens and d is the number of ducklings. Since we
are dealing with a real world situation, we can also assume that c and d are
non-negative integers. The solution space would look like this:
The above chart shows all the possible numbers of chickens and
ducklings that would satisfy the constraints of space and money. As you can
see, there are thousands of options.