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25 votes
Part 2: Consider this word problem: "Professor has several tarantulas and frogs. She counts 104 legs and 80 eyes in the room (not including her own). How many of each creature does she have?" Answer the question in a paragraph form. Answer the following: • What bits of information are not explicitly stated in the problem that would help us figure out the answer? Do you need to look anything up orpull some information from the back of your head?• Which mathematical concept(s) that we've gone over so far would be helpful for solving this problem?• Now, solve the problem and explain your solution. (It's OK if your answer isn't completely right. We're here to learn!)

User Debby Mendez
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1 Answer

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Okay, here we have this:

Considering the provided information we are going to calculate how many of each creature does she have, so we obtain the following:

• What bits of information are not explicitly stated in the problem that would help us figure out the answer? Do you need to look anything up or

pull some information from the back of your head?:

The missing information of the exercise is the amount of legs and eyes of each type of animal

• Which mathematical concept(s) that we've gone over so far would be helpful for solving this problem?:

The mathematical concept that we apply to solve this exercise will be the systems of equations of two equations by two incognites.

• Now, solve the problem and explain your solution. (It's OK if your answer isn't completely right. We're here to learn!):

According to the given information we obtain the following systems of equations:

8x+4y=104 (Equation of the legs)

8x+2y=80 (Eye equation)

"X" corresponds to the number of tarantulas and "y" to the number of frogs.

Solving:

We will clear x in the second equation:

8x+2y=80

8x=80-2y

x=(80-2y)/8

x=10-2y/8

Replacing in the first equation:

8x+4y=104

8(10-2y/8)+4y=104

80-2y+4y=104

80+2y=104

2y=24

y=24/2

y=12

Using this value of y in the equation of x:

x=10-2y/8

x=10-2(12)/8

x=10-24/8

x=10-3

x=7

Finally we obtain that she has 7 tarantulas and 12 frogs.

User Yufei
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