Question

Lincoln wants to sort 18 plums into bags so that each bag contains the

same number of plums.
He wants to end up with more than one bag of plums, and he wants each
bag to contain more than one plum.
Work out all the possibilities for the number of plums he could put into each
bag.

Answer 1

Here's how I solved it:

Work your way up from least to greatest with different possibilities.

Since there has to be more than one bag, and more than one plum in each bag, we can skip to have two bags.

1st solution: 2 bags with 9 plums in each bag.

Now we can try with 3 bags.

2nd solution: 3 bags with 6 plums in each bag.

4 can not be spread out evenly without there being halves of plums and things like that, neither can 5, so we can try with 6 bags.

3rd solution: 6 bags with 3 plums in each bag.

7 can not be spread out evenly without there being halves of plums and things like that, neither can 8, so lets try with 9 bags.

4th solution: 9 bags with 2 plums in each bag.

I think these are all the solutions, so I hope you understand and get the right answer!