trollins said:
I need help with a math question.
Number Sense: The sum of two whole numbers between 20 and 40 is 58. The difference of the two numbers is 12. What are the two numbers?
Since this problem is posted in the Arithmetic forum, I think that perhaps you should be able to solve it without algebra.
I'd suggest the "guess and check" method.
You know that the two numbers are between 20 and 40. You know that the sum of the two numbers is 58. Ok....
let's take a guess. Maybe one of the numbers is 21. Then what would be the other one? ......you KNOW that the sum is 58......if one is 21, then the other is 58 - 21, or 37. We also know that the difference of the two numbers is supposed to be 12. What is 37 - 21? It's 16. That's too big, so we know our original guess is wrong.
Maybe we should try something bigger than 21 for the first number. Let's try 24. Again, the sum of the two numbers is 58. If one number is 24, then the other is 58 - 24, or 34. We also know that the difference of the two numbers is supposed to be 12. What is 34 - 24? It's 10. That's too small.
Ok...when we used 21 for the first number, we got something that was too big.
When we used 24 for the first number, we got something that was too small. That tells us something important! We need to pick a number between 21 and 24....
Ok...see what you can come up with!!