Problema Solution

the total sales of a company in 2008 was $45000. in 2011, it grew to $84000. use x as the number of years since 2000 and y as the total sales.

Answer provided by our tutors

The presented word problem is ambiguous... the growth could be based on a number of possible models, so we assume that the growth is linear.  A linear model can be solved by using two points (8,45000) and (11,45000), using 2000 as the reference for y=0. 

The model is then y=13000x-59000, which means there was an initial debt of $59,000.