Question

Write the following sentence into an expression using x as your variable: Myrna and Tom collect stamps. Tom has four more than half the stamps that Myrna has.

Answer 1

Answer: f(x) = x/2 + 4.

where f(x) is the number of stamps that Tom has, and x is the number of stamps that Myrna has.

Explanation:

The statement is:

"Tom has four more than half the stamps that Myrna has"

For how is written, we can model the number of stamps that Tom has as a function f(x).

f(x) represents the number of stamps that Tom has, and x is the number of stamps that Myrna has.

Then:

"four more than a number" is written as:

N + 4 (where N is the number)

"Half the stamps that Myrna has" is written as:

x/2.

Then the whole statement can be modeled as:

f(x) = x/2 + 4.

notice that we have x/2, and f(x) must be a whole number, so Myrna must have an even number of stamps (in that case x/2 will be integer)