SOLUTION: your customer bought half of the apples. Your second bought 1/4 of the remaining apples. Your third bought 12 apples left. How man did you have to begin with?

Question 698346: your customer bought half of the apples. Your second bought 1/4 of the remaining apples. Your third bought 12 apples left. How man did you have to begin with?
Answer by Stitch(470) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!

Multiply both sides by 4/3

Simplify

Multiply both sides by 2

You started with 32 apples
-------------------
The reason the X/2 was multiplied by 3/4 was because the second person took 1/4 of the remaining apples.
1 - 1/4 = 3/4
That means that the last person took 3/4 of the remaining apples.
RELATED QUESTIONS
Leon bought some apples. He gave 15 of the apples to his friends and threw away 1/4 of... (answered by greenestamps)

Celia bought 12 apples. She ate two of them. She sold the remaining apples for 20 cents (answered by checkley71)

apples weigh about 12 ounces each. Ronald bought 4 apples. how many pounds of apples did... (answered by co1511887)

zaman khan bought some apples , then he bought half a dozen more and found that the total (answered by stanbon)

Clive bought forty apples. he gave forty percent of the apples to his friends . how many... (answered by Boreal)

Amber and Jennifer bought 24 apples. Using J for Jennifers apples, write an expression... (answered by ewatrrr)

In 1880, a man bought some apples at 2 apples for 3 cents and bought the same number of... (answered by richwmiller)

Alvin has many apples. He gives 1/3 of his apples plus 2/3 of an apple to Bob. He then... (answered by VFBundy)

Sarah bought bananas,apples,pears.The ratio of bananas to apples was 3 to 5 and the ratio (answered by Boreal,greenestamps)