Question 422111: 6. If Leah is 6 years older than Sue, and John is 5 years older than Leah, and the total of their ages is 41. Then how old is Sue?
I tried to solve it on my own by dividing all 3 into 41 and then subtracted 6 hrs from sue and the subtracted 5 yrs from Leah and I am not coming up anywhere close to any of the answers provided. I don't know how to figure out what method to use when solving word problems. Can you please help?
Answer by jim_thompson5910(35256)   (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website! Let L = Leah's age, S = Sue's age, and J = John's age
So because "Leah is 6 years older than Sue", we know that L = S+6 (ie add 6 years to Sue's age to get Leah's age)
Since "John is 5 years older than Leah", we also know that J = L+5
Finally, we know that "the total of their ages is 41", which tells us that L + S + J = 41
So simply plug in J = L+5 to get
L + S + (L+5) = 41
L + S + L + 5 = 41
Now plug in L = S + 6 to get
(S+6) + S + (S+6) + 5 = 41
S + 6 + S + S + 6 + 5 = 41
Now let's solve for S
S + 6 + S + S + 6 + 5 = 41
3S + 17 = 41
3S = 41 - 17
3S = 24
S = 24/3
S = 8
So Sue is 8 years old (since S = 8 )
So Leah is L = S+6 = 8+6 = 14 years old (since L = 14)
And John is J = L + 5 = 14 + 5 = 19 years old.
Notice that the sum of their ages is
8+14+19 = 22+19 = 41
If you need more help, email me at jim_thompson5910@hotmail.com
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Jim
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