Question

Sarah bought 5 more apples than.John did. Mona bought 4 less applesthan Sarah did. Who bought the mostapples? Who bought the least?

Answer 1

Let s, j, m be the number of apples Sarah, John, Mona bought.

Sarah bought 5 more apples than John did. Thus;

`s=j+5\ldots\ldots\ldots\ldots.......\ldots\ldots\ldots..\text{equation 1}`

Also, Mona bought 4 less than Sarah. Thus;

`m=s-4\ldots\ldots\ldots\ldots\ldots\ldots\text{.}\mathrm{}\text{equation 2}`

Expressing m in term of j, we have;

`\begin{gathered} m=j+5-4 \\ m=j+1\ldots\ldots\ldots\ldots\ldots\text{equation 3} \end{gathered}`

Relating equation 1 and equation 3, we have;

`s>m`

From equation 3, we have;

`j=m-1\ldots\ldots..\ldots\ldots.\ldots\text{equation 4}`

Expressing equation 1 in term of j, we have;

`\begin{gathered} s=m-1+5 \\ s=m+4 \end{gathered}`

Thus, Sarah bought the most.

From equation 3, we can deduce that;

`m>j`

Thus, John bought the least.