SOLUTION: two more than seven times Lynn’s age

Question 1205692: two more than seven times Lynn’s age

Found 2 solutions by josgarithmetic, greenestamps:
Answer by josgarithmetic(39617) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
What difficulty do you really have here?
Answer by greenestamps(13200) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!

For a beginning algebra student, it can be hard to learn to interpret the given words correctly....

"two more than seven times Lynn’s age"

Note the "two more than ..." means you are starting with the "..." and adding 2. So the algebraic expression is going to be of the form (...) + 2.

"seven times ..." means you are multiplying "..." by 7. "seven times Lynn's age" means you are multiplying Lynn's age by 7.

So let x be Lynn's age
Then "seven times Lynn's age" is 7x
And then "two more than seven times Lynn’s age" is 7x + 2.

Note that many beginning students, by looking at the words exactly as they are given without thinking of their meaning, will write the given expression as 2 + 7x. The expressions "7x + 2" and "2 + 7x" are algebraically equivalent; however, "7x + 2" is a better representation, because -- again -- "two more than seven times Lynn’s age" means you are starting with 7 times Lynn's age and adding 2.

If the same student, by reading the words directly without thinking about what they mean, interpreted "2 less than Lynn's age" as "2 - 7x", that would clearly be wrong, because the written expression means you are starting with 7 times Lynn's age and subtracting 2. So the correct algebraic expression would be "7x - 2" instead of "2 - 7x".

The student needs to learn to look at the meaning of the given expression in words to write the correct algebraic expression.

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