Algebra I All-in-One For Dummies

Chapter 22

Relating Values in Story Problems

IN THIS CHAPTER

Dealing with age problems

Counting up consecutive integers

Working on sharing the workload

Yes, this is another chapter on story problems. Just in case you’re one of those people who are less than excited about the prospect of problems made up of words, I’ve been breaking these problems down into specific types to help deliver the material logically. Chapter 20 deals with formulas, Chapter 21 gets into geometry and distances, and now this chapter focuses on age problems, consecutive integers, and work problems.

Problems dealing with age and consecutive integers have something in common: You use one or more base values or ages, assigning variables, and you keep adding the same number to each base value. As you work through these problems, you find some recurring patterns, and the theme is to use the same format — pick a variable for a number and add something on to it.

As for work problems, they’re a completely different bird. In work problems, you need to divvy up the work and add it all together to get the whole job done. The portions usually aren’t equal, and the number of participants can vary.

This chapter offers ...