SOLUTION: joe is two years older than sally and sally is twice as old as caroline. if the sum of their ages is 82 years, how old are joe, sally, and caroline?

Question 845796: joe is two years older than sally and sally is twice as old as caroline. if the sum of their ages is 82 years, how old are joe, sally, and caroline?
Answer by pmesler(52) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
The easiest way to tackle word problems like this is to write out the variables and what they correspond to. If you look at the problem, the only person who doesn't have any value added to or multiplied to is Caroline's age. So, we'll just say
Caroline's age = x
We read that Sally is twice as old as Caroline. Therefore
Sally's age = 2x
Next, we read that Joe is two years older than Sally. Since Sally's age is 2x that must mean that
Joe's age = 2x+2
The problem says that sum of their ages is 82 years. All that means is we add up all of their ages. When we do that we get this equation:

(2x+2) + (2x) + (x) = 82
Now we just solve for x.
Combine like terms.
5x + 2 = 82
Subtract each side by 2
5x = 80
Divide each side by 5.
x = 16.
Remember that we said Caroline's age is x. Therefore Caroline is 16 years old.
That means that Sally is 2x or 32 years old, and Joe is 2x+2 or 34 years old.

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