The sum of the ages of mike and ed is 44 mike is twice as old as ed was when ed is three times as old as mike when was when mike was three times as old as ed how old are mike and ed?

Answer 1

The difficult part of word problems, is translating the English language into algebraic formulae. Once you correctly do this, however, the problem is often extremely easy to solve by even beginning algebra students. "The sum of the ages of Mike and Ed is 44" means: M + E = 44. In this case, we are SETTING M to equal Mike's age NOW, and SETTING E to equal Ed's age NOW. Adding two numbers together creates a quantity called a "sum" so this is why we know to do this. The final question, "How old are Mike and Ed?" therefore asks for us to solve multiple equations for M and E. Given that you wrote out the question incorrectly, there is a considerable chance that there IS no valid solution to this puzzle. Write it out correctly, and we can proceed.