Answer
The television originally cost $400.
Work Step by Step
First, we need to define our unknown. What we want to find out is the original price of the television, 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 $320$ dollars.
The amount of the reduction can be given by the expression (20%)$(x)$. 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 TV:
$$x - 0.20x = 320$$
We combine like terms:
$$0.8x = 320$$
To solve for $x$, we divide both sides of the equation by $0.8$:
$$x = 400$$
The television originally cost $400.
