Answer:
Kirk is 28 years old, Brian is 36 years old, Matt is 18 years old, and the manager is 24 years old.
Explanation:
Let
be Kirk's age.
Let
be Brian's age.
Let
be Matt's age.
Let
be the boss/manager's age.
From the information given, we can set up 4 equations:
Rewrite the first equation, substituting
,
, and
in terms of
to get:
Open up the parentheses using the distributive property (which is
) and combine like terms to get:
Add 26 to both sides to reach:
Thus,
. Substitute
for
in the second, third, and fourth original equations to find that
,
, and
. Therefore, Kirk is 28 years old, Brian is 36 years old, Matt is 18 years old, and the manager is 24 years old. To check, you can add up all of the ages to get 106.
Hope this helps :)