Got stumped by the following question, which I paraphrase: “Two bookcases have a total of 173 books; if you were to remove 38 books from the first, then the second would have 6 more than twice as many in Bookcase 1. How many books are in each bookcase?” The answer (81 & 92) we eventually distilled to the following equation, where x = the number of books in Bookcase 1:
x + (2(x – 38) + 6) = 173
x – 70 = 173
x = 81
Important thing, at least to me, was clarifying that “twice as many in Bookcase 1” meant after the 38 books are removed, but having to resort to an Excel sheet of potential values to reverse-engineer the formula that worked does not bode well if we move on to topics beyond a 10-year-old’s after school classes. I just don’t think I was ever as good at solving word problems as I am at re-wording them.
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