1. Aug 23, 2014

tinybang

Am a little stuck on a question in my maths homework. Here goes. $6570 to be divided among members of a family. 9 other members of the family find out about the cash and insist on there share. as a result the share was reduced by$120.

Find original number of family members.

So far ive got.
S=Individual share of money
X=Original number of family members

It is the right track, but you can write S in terms of x. If $6570 is divided among x people, what is the share of one person? ehild 3. Aug 23, 2014 tinybang What do you mean by write S in terms of X? 4. Aug 23, 2014 ehild S is the original share, 6570 divided by among people. How do you write it mathematically? ehild 5. Aug 23, 2014 tinybang Should i divide both sides by XS? I know i need to isolate one of the terms. Just not sure how to go about it. 6. Aug 23, 2014 ehild No. Answer my question. What is the amount one person gets if 6570 is divided among x people? Say, there are 10 people in the family, so x=10. How much one person gets? ehild 7. Aug 23, 2014 tinybang 6570/x+9 6570/19 = 324.73 8. Aug 23, 2014 ehild No, I meant the original amount, they got before the other family members arrived. You share 24 apples among 4 people, how many apples does on person get? If two more persons come and they also want their share, hove many it will be? And I do not understand what you wanted to say. You wrote that 6570 is divided by x and 96570 divided by 19 and the ratios added. Where did you get that 96570 from????? If x=10, that sum is 5740 instead of 324.73. ehild 9. Aug 23, 2014 Ray Vickson Wrong. $$\frac{6570}{x} + 9 \neq 324.73$$ If you mean $$\frac{6570}{x+9}$$ then take the trouble to write it properly, using parentheses, like this: 6570/(x+9). It is not hard to do, and makes everything much more readable. 10. Aug 23, 2014 Mark44 Staff: Mentor To the OP, 6570/x + 9 means $\frac{6570}{x} + 9$, which is not what you intended. As Ray says, use parentheses to write what you mean. Also, what you wrote in the earlier post is missing an equals sign, leading to additional confusion. This should be 6570/(x + 9) = 6570/19 = <whatever> 11. Aug 23, 2014 tinybang Am really sorry ill keep all that in mind. I seriously have no idea where to go with this. Ive tried the method of elimination/substitution. Does this perhaps have to be a quadratic function? 12. Aug 24, 2014 ehild You will get a quadratic equation for x. ehild 13. Aug 24, 2014 tinybang Hey I ended up working it out. Took me a good few hours but yes I ended up with a quadratic. Thanks for the help. :) 14. Aug 24, 2014 ehild I am pleased. What did you get for x? ehild 15. Aug 25, 2014 tinybang For the purpose of this thread I did change the equation a bit from the my homework as a result I got decimal numbers which may seem a bit strange. S I got 250.28 and X i got 26.25 16. Aug 25, 2014 Chestermiller Staff: Mentor You have x people initially, and each one of them was to get S dollars. How many dollars does this amount to in total (in terms of x and S only)? How is this related to the$6570?

Chet

17. Aug 25, 2014

thelema418

What is the original statement of the problem that gives you these numbers? If X represents a number of family members, does a fractional number for family members make sense?

18. Aug 25, 2014

SteamKing

Staff Emeritus
You should check your calculations by using your value of x in the original problem statement.
I worked through the algebra and I got a different result.

You also can't have a fraction of a person showing up to claim a share, since the number of humans is maddeningly restricted to the set of positive integers.