Answer
The table originally cost $240.
Work Step by Step
First, we need to define our unknown. What we want to find out is the original price of the table, which we shall designate as $x$.
We will need to subtract the amount of the reduction from the original price to get the final price of $180$ dollars.
The amount of the 25% reduction can be given by the expression (25%)$(x)$. We cannot work with percentages, so we change the percent into a decimal. We do this by dividing the percentage by $100$ to get rid of the percentage sign.
We can now set up the following equation to find the original price of the table:
$$x - 0.25x = 180$$
We combine like terms by subtracting:
$$0.75x = 180$$
To solve for $x$, we divide both sides of the equation by $0.75$:
$$x = 240$$
The table originally cost $240.