SOLUTION: I'm 5 years older than my wife who is twice older than my daughter the sum of our age is 100. who old are we now?

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Question 1157227: I'm 5 years older than my wife who is twice older than my daughter the sum of our age is 100. who old are we now?
Found 4 solutions by Alan3354, josmiceli, greenestamps, josgarithmetic:
Answer by Alan3354(69443)   (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
By "twice older" do you mean 3 times as old?
Answer by josmiceli(19441)   (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
Let wife's age =
My age is
Daughter's age is
-----------------------------------
given:





and

and

----------------------
Wife is 38
I am 43
Daughter is 19
---------------------
check:



OK
Answer by greenestamps(13200)   (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!


Is the problem you show EXACTLY as it was given to you?

If a problem is written to give a student experience in solving problems, it should be written in clear standard language, so that the student KNOWS what the problem is.

Saying the wife is "twice older than" the daughter is awful English. You would NEVER see that in ordinary written or spoken English.

Since "twice" means "two times", the only possible interpretation of "twice older than" is "two times older than". And, unfortunately, that phrase is almost always used incorrectly.

If the daughter were 20 and the wife was two times AS OLD AS the daughter, then the wife's age would be 20*2=40.

But if the daughter were 20 and the wife was two times OLDER THAN the daughter, then the ONLY correct grammatical interpretation of that would be that the age of the wife is 20, PLUS TWO TIMES 20, which makes 20+40=60.

Unfortunately, in everyday usage, "two times older than" is INCORRECTLY used to mean the same thing as "two times as old".

My point is that "x times older than" or "x times greater than" should NEVER be used in a math problem, because the mathematically and grammatically correct meaning is different than the careless meaning applied to it in everyday language. And using an awkward and uncommon phrase like "twice older" makes the language exponentially worse.

SO.... after all that....

The only possible CORRECT interpretation of the problem as written is...
x = daughter's age
3x = wife's age
3x+5 = husband's age

Then, since the sum of their ages is 100,



And that equation has a solution that is not a whole number, so the problem has no solution.
Answer by josgarithmetic(39618)   (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
PERSON    VARIABLE   EXPRESSION OR VALUE
narrator    n        2d+5
wife        w        d+d+d=3d
daughter    d      
SUM                   100

Notice from description, wife "twice older than daughter".

Solve for d, and decide if the value found makes sense.
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