SOLUTION: A man is four times older than his son but five years older than his wife. The sum of their ages is 103. How old is the man?

Question 1158671: A man is four times older than his son but five years older than his wife. The sum of their ages is 103. How old is the man?
Found 4 solutions by Edwin McCravy, Shin123, ikleyn, josgarithmetic:
Answer by Edwin McCravy(20056)   (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
A man is four times older than his son
M = 4S
but five years older than his wife.
M = W+5
The sum of their ages is 103.
M+S+W = 103
Solve this system:
I won't tell you the age of the man, but the son is 12. Edwin

Answer by Shin123(626)   (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
Let the man's age be . His son's age is and his wife's age is . So we have the equation . Simplifying, we get . Multiplying both sides by 4, we get . Dividing both sides by 9 gives . Check, .
Answer by ikleyn(52788)   (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
.

In English, when you use it in Math,

"A man is four times older than his son" (*)

means this and only this

A man is 5 times as old as his son".

But this interpretation (although is the ONLY CORRECT), is DEFINITELY not that you really want,
and it leads to the non-integer answer, which is NONSENSE in this kind of problems.

The cause is in that you INCORRECTLY use this combination of words (*).

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Learn English from my posts in parallel with Math and have doubled benefits (!)

Answer by josgarithmetic(39618)   (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
Assigning n for the son's age, and following the description as written:

Man n+4n=5n Son n Wife 5n-5 SUM 103

This gives equation .

if to three decimal figures to right of decimal point.

n, son's age is 9 years 43 weeks.
Is that the kind of result you expect?
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