Two men ask you to guess their ages based on the following clues:
The sum of their ages is 76. One of the men is 16 years older than twice the age of the other.
lets make x equal the the age of the younger man and y equal the age of the older man. You are given x+y=76 and you can make the equation 2x+16=y since we are told that the older one is 16 more than twice the age of the younger one. Since we have 2 equations and with the same variable and one has y already written in terms of x (y=2x+16) i will use substitution and make the given equaton all in terms of x. x+(2x+16)=76 (solve this for x) 3x+16=76 3x=60 x=20 Then you can solve for y using the equation the equaion x+y=76 since we now know x=20. 20+y=76 y=56
Second equation is y=2x+16 (can also be written as y-2x=16) x=20 y=56
I hope this helps. If anything is unclear or you just want further explanation please let me know in the comments.
