Question

A group of friends were making snowballs for a snowball fight. Abby made 3 times as many as Jake. Suzie made four less than Abby, and then their dog ate one! When they were finished they had 30 snowballs. How many snowballs did each person make

Answer 1

Jake made 5 snowballs, Abby made 15, and Suzie made 11, totaling 30 snowballs after the dog ate one.

Step-by-step explanation:

We have a word problem that involves basic algebra. By setting up equations based on the information given, we can calculate how many snowballs each person made. Let's call the number of snowballs Jake made 'J'. Therefore, Abby made '3J', and Suzie made 'four less than Abby', which is '3J - 4'. However, one snowball was eaten by their dog, so we subtract one from the total. The total number of snowballs is 30.

The equation to represent this situation is: J + 3J + (3J - 4) - 1 = 30

Combining like terms and solving for 'J' gives us:
7J - 5 = 30
7J = 35
J = 5

Now we can find out how many snowballs Abby and Suzie made:
Abby made 3J = 3 * 5 = 15 snowballs.
Suzie made 3J - 4 = 15 - 4 = 11 snowballs.

So, Jake made 5 snowballs, Abby made 15, Suzie made 11, and the dog ate 1 to make a total of 30 snowballs.

Answer 2

Jake made 5 snowballs, Abby made 15 snowballs, and Suzie made 11 snowballs.

Step-by-step explanation:

To solve this problem, let's assign variables to each person. Let's say Jake made x snowballs. Then Abby made 3 times as many, so Abby made 3x snowballs. Suzie made four less than Abby, so Suzie made 3x-4 snowballs. Their dog ate one snowball, so we subtract 1 from the total number of snowballs they had in the end, which is 30.

Now we can set up an equation to solve for x. x (from Jake) + 3x (from Abby) + 3x-4 (from Suzie) - 1 (for the dog) = 30. Combining like terms, we get 7x - 5 = 30. Adding 5 to both sides, we get 7x = 35. Dividing both sides by 7, we find that x = 5.

So Jake made 5 snowballs, Abby made 3 times as many (15 snowballs), and Suzie made four less than Abby (11 snowballs).