SOLUTION: Bubba invests his money for three years at two separate accounts, the first earning %8 interest and the second earning 10 percent. If the amount of interest in the first account wa

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Question 1100475: Bubba invests his money for three years at two separate accounts, the first earning %8 interest and the second earning 10 percent. If the amount of interest in the first account was four times greater than the amount in the second account and the interest for the three years in both accounts totaled 2,950, what was the original principle invested in each account.
Answer by greenestamps(13200) (Show Source):
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There is undoubtedly an error in the statement of the problem, where it says the amount of interest from the first account is FOUR TIMES GREATER THAN the amount of interest from the second account.

Grammatically, the amount "4 times greater than x" is x, plus x 4 more times, which makes 5 times x. However, if we use this interpretation, we have x as the amount of interest from the second account and 5x as the amount from the first account. That would mean

The two amounts of interest would then be $491.67 and $2458.33.

Those probably were not the intended numbers for the problem.

Unfortunately, most people for whom English is the first language erroneously interpret "4 times greater than" to mean the same thing as "4 times as great as". Undoubtedly the author of the problem was one of those people.

So almost certainly the problem was supposed to say that the amount of interest from the first account is 4 times AS MUCH AS the amount from the second account.

Then we have

So the two amounts of interest are $590 for the second account and $2360 for the first.

Now we can determine the amounts invested in each account, knowing that the first account earned 8% interest and the second earned 10%.

The amount invested in the first account was $29,500.

The amount invested in the second account was $5900.