General Formulas and Concepts
Logic
- Critical Thinking
- Analyzation
Application
Step 1: Define
Let's organize what the problem gives us:
- Mr. Smith had 4 daughters.
- Each daughter had 4 brothers.
- We want to find how many kids Mr. Smith has.
Step 2: Work
We can already tell that the initial amount of kids Mr. Smith has before we factor in the brother count is equal to 4, for the 4 daughters that were stated as a given in the problem.
Now, the tricky part comes in the form of "each daughter had 4 brothers." Remember that within a family, everyone has the same siblings. It doesn't matter which family member's perspective you are looking from, but your siblings will always stay the same. We can show this with an example:
Suppose I had a family of 4 kids total. I had 2 daughters and 2 sons. Their names were Rose, Sakura, David, and Andrew. Rose would then have 3 siblings: Sakura, David, and Andrew. Sakura would also have 3 siblings: Rose, David, and Andrew, so on and so forth.
Applying this example and knowledge to our current problem, if Mr. Smith's daughters each had 4 brothers, then the total number of kids Mr. Smith has is 8 total kids (4 daughters + 4 sons) since each daughter's brother would be the same sibling.
This would be called double-counting if you counted that each daughter would have 4 different siblings, resulting in a false answer of 16 kids (4 daughters multiplied by 4 brothers for each daughter).
Answer
∴ Mr. Smith has 8 kids.
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Topic: Math
Unit: ?