If you buy six pens and one mechanical pencil, you'll get only $1 change from your $10 bill. but if you buy four pens and two mechanical pencils, you'll get $2 change. how much does each pen and each pencil cost?

Let p be the prize of a pen and m the prize of a mechanical pencils. If you buy six pens and one mechanical pencil, you spend 6p+m. We know that this equals 9, because you get 1$ change from a 10$ bill.

Similarly, if you buy four pens and two mechanical pencils, you spend 4p+2m, which is 8$, because now you get a $2 change. Put these equation together in a system:

Now, if you multiply the first equation by 2, the system becomes

Subtract the second equation from the first:

Plug this value into the first equation to get

not enough information

step-by-step explanation:

we cannot know this, because the other students could have handed out 10 flyers, or they could have handed out 100. one way, the mean would go up, and another way, the mean would go down.