Clint Chandler - Algebra Success

6 + 12 ÷ 3 * 2

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor is it the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. Charles Darwin

A bakery sells muffins in packs of 6. If Maya wants to buy enough muffins to give 3 to each of her 14 classmates, what’s the minimum number of packs she must buy?

Difficult ACT/SAT Question

A student wrote a program that takes a list of numbers as input. The program then adds each pair of adjacent numbers in the list to obtain a new list of numbers, then repeats this process with the new list until the list contains only one number. This number is then the output.

For example, if the input is (1, 6, 2, 7) then the program adds the adjacent numbers in the list to obtain (7, 8, 9). The program then repeats this process to obtain (15, 17), and then (32). Since the list now contains only one number, the output is 32.

Let Y represent the student’s favorite number. The student input the numbers (9, 2, Y, 7) into his program and the output was 7 more than 4 times his favorite number, or 4Y + 7. What is the student’s favorite number?

ACT Question
A theater sold 100 tickets for a play. Student tickets cost $6 each, and adult tickets cost $10 each. If the total revenue from ticket sales was $820, how many adult tickets were sold?

A. 45
B. 50
C. 55
D. 60
E. 65

ACT Question
If 3x − 7 = 2x + 5, what is the value of x?

A. 12
B. –12
C. –1
D. 1
E. 0