You need to type out your problems a little better when asking for help, it's hard to understand everything with no breaks or punctuation of any kind.
You can solve this using systems of equations. Let's say we sold 'x' $17 tickets, 'y' $24 tickets and 'z' $40 tickets. Here's what we know:
x = 9z (we are told that we sold 9 times more $17 than the vip $40)
x = 55y (I THINK that you are saying 'we sold 55 times more $17 tickets than $24 tickets)
17x + 24y + 40z = 48730 (the total amount of money we got from all sales is 48730. Not sure why you said "vip sales" and then "all 3 tickets". VIP tickets are just one type. Again, need to be more clear)
There are several ways to solve systems. You could re-arrange the first two to express 'y' and 'z' in terms of 'x' and then plug them into the third. Alternatively, you could subtract one equation from another to eliminate variables. I'll do the first method.
z = x /9
y = x / 55
17x + 24x/55 + 40x/9 = 48730
8415x + 216x + 2200x = 24121350
10831x = 24121350
x = 2227.06
Clearly we couldn't have sold 2227.06 tickets, meaning that my equations are wrong because the problem is unclear. But if you apply the same method, you'll get the correct answer. After you get x, you can just plug it into the first two equations and get both y and z.
edit: woops, I fucked my math up. But you still get a nonsensical answer.
This post was edited by russian on Oct 27 2015 10:25am