Barney had a bag of cookies.
He ate 35 in the first 10 minutes.
He ate 1/4 of the remaining cookies during the next 10 minutes.
The next day he ate 20,
but then he made 10 more.
His wife Louise, ate 15 cookies while Barney was at work.
When Barney got home from work, he ate 1/2 of the remaining cookies.
Louise ate 5 more when he went out into the backyard
Barney then ate 15 more and found that he had only 2 left
How many cookies did he start with?
How many did he eat?
How much weight did he gain if every 10 cookies translates into 1 pound?
Let's go backward through the eating and making of cookies.
In the end there were only 2
Before that, Louise ate 15. <--Barney ate 15
Before that there were 17.
Before that Louise ate 5. <--Louise ate 5
Before that there were 22.
Before that he ate 1/2 of the remaining,
Before that there were 44. So he ate 22. <--Barney ate 22
Before that, Louise ate 15 cookies. <--Louise ate 15
Before that there were 59.
Before that he made 10 more.
Before that there were only 49.
Before that he ate 20. <--Barney ate 20
Before that there were 69.
He ate 1/4 of the remaining cookies.
So the remaining 69 was the other 3/4 of how many
there were before.
69÷(3/4) = 69x(4/3) = 92
So he ate 1/4 of 92 or 23. <--Barney ate 23
So before he ate those 23, there were 92.
Before that he ate 35. <--Barney ate 35
Before that there were 127.
So he started with 127.
The arrows above indicate the cookies that each ate.
So Barney ate 15+22+20+23+35 = 115 cookies.
To check, Louise ate 5+15 = 20
That makes 135 cookies eaten by them both,
He started with 127 cookies and made 10 more,
so altogether there were 137 cookies, They ate
135 of them and there were 2 cookies left. So
that checks.
Since he gained 1 pound for every 10 cookies,
Barney gained 115÷10=11.5 pounds.
[Louise gained 20÷10=2 pounds]
Edwin