My friends 5th grade daughter just posed this math question to me. Since math was never my thing I admit I dont have an answer. It goes like this: A woman was having a party for her friends so she asked her chef to prepare enough food for a decent amount of people since she herself didnt know exactly how many would be there. At the end of the night she asked her chef how many people were at the party based on thee amount of dinners he served. He answered her by saying; He served 1 plate of fruit for every 2 people there. He served 1 plate of vegetables for every 3 people there. and, He served 1 plate of beef for every 4 people there. He knows for a fact he used 65 plates total. Based on these facts,how many people were at the party.??
60. EDIT: For those of you that actually care how I got the right answer, I calculated the average plate for one person by taking 1/2, 1/3, and 1/4. This tells me how many total plates each individual person had during the course of their dinner. From there you take 65 (total plates used) and divide it by 13/12 (individual plates used) and end up with 60. Quick math is 65 / 13 * 12 = 60 Long math is 65 / (1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4) = 60
Oh and let me just say I really wish I was this good at Excel when I was in high school. Would have made things a lot easier.
x is the total amount of people. 1 of 2 people ate the fruit plate. to calculate the amount of people who ate fruit, you would do 1/2 * x = Number of Fruit Plates. So if 10 people were at the party then there were 5 plates of fruit that were eaten. With this you know that 1 out of 3 people at the vegetables and 1 out of 4 ate beef. That means the same thing as above. Since you know the total number of plates, all you need to do is figure out x. 1/2x + 1/3x + 1/4x = 65. To add fractions you have to find the common denominator and add accordingly. Which is what is the lowest number that all three divide into, which is 12. 6/12x + 4/12x + 3/12x = 65. Add together the fractions you get 13/12x = 65. Then you divide 13/12 from both sides, which is multiplying both sides by 12/13, and you get 60. That is how I did it.
So its 65 divided by 1.083...that gives you 60. I think I got it now.....Whew,thank god I`m a much better NFL analyst than math guru.
I divided 1 by 2....divided 1 by 3...and divided 1 by 4...that gave me .5 + .333 + .25 and that equaled 1.083. I then divided 65 by 1.083 and got 60.018
that was easy. w/o doing the fractions, I just took my first guess: 60 people = 15 beef, 20 veggies + 30 fruit.
