by Joel Crouse
(Bend, Or, United States)
Max and Mary are going on a picnic. Mary packs 4 apples, 3 oranges and 2 bananas. Max packs 2 more apples than marry and 8 more oranges than Mary. If Max eats three of his apples and Mary eats two of Max's oranges, how many apples and oranges are left in total?
Solution
The question asks if Max eats three of his apples and Mary eats 3 of Max's oranges, how many apples and oranges are left in total. To solve this question we need to know how many total apples and oranges Max and Mary packed. To do this, we know that max pack two more apples than Mary. If Mary packed 4 apples, then Max packed 6 apples. We also know that Max packed 8 more oranges than Mary. Since Mary packed 3 oranges, max must have packed 11 oranges. Now we know that in total Max has 6 apples and 11 oranges. But the question states that Max ate three of his apples and Mary ate two of Max's oranges. We can solve the problem know using subtraction.
6 - 3 = 3 and 11 - 2 = 9.
Now we can simply add the remaining apples and the remaining oranges.
Apples: 4 + 3 = 7
Oranges: 9 + 3 = 12.
So there are 7 apples left and 12 oranges left.