Help me solve this problem: Patricia has a basket of eggs. She gave half of them to her mother. Then her friend took two more to make some cookies. After that she gave 1/3 of what was left to her neighbor and then she made an omelet with four more of the eggs. if she was the left with half dozen eggs, how many eggs did she start with?
Since you've posted this in the Arithmetic category, you may not have studied algebra yet.
But, a very legitimate problem-solving technique that you may have learned is "working backwards." It applies nicely to a problem like this one.
Start at the END of the information, and work your way back to the beginning. I'll see if I can get you started.
At the end, Patricia has a half dozen eggs...that's six eggs. This was AFTER she made an omelet using four eggs. So, before she made the omelet, she must have had 6 + 4, or 10 eggs.
Before she made the omelet, she had given 1/3 of the eggs to her neighbor. So, she had 1 - (1/3), or 2/3 of the eggs then. Ten eggs is 2/3 of 15, so she had 15 eggs before giving any to her neighbor.
Can you keep going backwards?
