Please help..my daughters math problem

[Garnier Fructis]

My dream is for all forums in the world to support LaTeX code... That would make such discussions so much more convenient!

Oh, yes please. Though I think that will just give me more things to trigger my OCD. Like people not using the command to scale parentheses to match the height of the thing they're enclosing. Fucking rage.

[Pterodactylus]

Ok guys i found the answer online all these theories and stuff you guys are talking about my daughter is only 8 lol

dont think she needs to be doing stuff like this yet but w/e

Well, be thankful your daughter will be better at math as an adult than you are.

[Deleted]

My dream is for all forums in the world to support LaTeX code... That would make such discussions so much more convenient!

idd.

The way I solved it and probably May90 did first time around is one of the ways they envisage an 8yo doing it. Really it is a problem that many will go word blind simply because "it is maths" and not do the rational thing. An 8yo might find it easier without the baggage of later school maths. Instead of thinking about equations we probably thought of nuts in bowls.

If I were to break down in my head what went on: I pictured the 5 bowls. Saw immediately that there were two statements of equality giving the sum of bowls 2&3, and 4&5. And knew there was the first bowl with the other nuts in it. If anything I probably thought of pinching bowls 2&3, and 4&5 closer together and saw immediately that I could find something unknown but crucial by discarding, for a time, the statement about the sum of bowls 3&4.

If you also keep in mind that the total number of nuts is 100 then.

bowl 1 must contain the remainder of
100 -[(What's in bowls 2&3) + (what's in bowls 4&5)]

that's a simple matter of visualisation. It isn't really one of knowing any algebra. In fact that is only necessary to succinctly communicate the working. Everyone picks up the method when they are really young with counting cubes and other games really early on. There's a massive disconnect though in how teachers in schools fail to teach really basic skills with regards to "making little notes in your head or on paper for the sums that you do" so the concepts of "numbers & things" can be used without losing track of what's going on when it's a bit more complicated. The whole "looking at the statements in different ways" for the purposes of addition and subtraction would be a really cool way to introduce what parentheses are for but I doubt this ever happens.

[Cosmic Janitor]

My dream is for all forums in the world to support LaTeX code... That would make such discussions so much more convenient!

I would be happy with a normal formula editor..

[Deleted]

if im correct it's a matrices problem. try to use the gauss theorem

Yes this is what i'm going to tell an 8 year old girl. "It's a simple matrices problem, just apply the Gauss theorem"