For his long distance phone service, Ali pays a 7 monthly fee plus 7 cents per minute. Last month, Ali's long distance bill was 19.53 . For how many minutes was Ali billed?

179 minutes

Step-by-step explanation:

From the information given, you know that the total cost of the long distance service is equal to 7 plus the result of multiplying 0.7 for the number of minutes:

Total cost=7+0.07x, where x is the amount of minutes.

Now, you can replace the total cost with 19.53 that is the amount Ali was billed and solve for x:

19.53=7+0.07x

19.53-7=0.07x

12.53=0.07x

x=12.53/0.07

x=179

According to this, the answer is that Ali was billed for 179 minutes.