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How old is the person in this problem?

2006-10-09 14:38:05 · 2 answers · asked by mier's teacher 1 in Education & Reference Homework Help

2 answers

Set this up as an algebra problem:

Let x be the person's current age (that is what you are trying to solve for).

The father's age (y) is equal to x+41 (father was 41 when the person was born).

In 5 years, the person will be x+5 years old.

Eight years ago, the person's father was x+41-8 years old, or x+33 years old. At that time, the father was three times as old as the person will be in 5 yrs, or 3*(x+5).

Now we have an equation that we can solve for x with!

x+33 {the father's age 8 years ago} = 3(x+5) {the person's age 5 years from now}

x + 33 = 3(x+5)

x + 33 = 3x + 15

18 = 2x {getting all numbers on one side, and x's on the other side}

so, x = 9!

Check this with the original problem to see if the answer makes sense:

Person is 9 now
In 5 years he will be 14
8 years ago he was 1
His father is 41 yrs older, so 8 years ago he was 42
42 = 3 * 14 , so yes our answer is correct.

Hope that helped! Word problems can be tricky, and scary, but if you tackle them one little piece at a time you can easily kick their butt and obtain your answer!

2006-10-09 14:41:34 · answer #1 · answered by I ♥ AUG 6 · 0 0

33

2006-10-09 21:48:53 · answer #2 · answered by messtograves 5 · 0 0

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