There are several ways to approach this problem. We know that the book fair was attended by men, women, and children. What we don't know is how many of each attended the fair. Any unknown quantity can be represented by a variable. Suppose we let the number of women who attended the fair equal x. From the problem, we know that (x + 25) men attended the event. Another way of saying that 1/2 as many women as children attended is to say that twice as many children as women attended. Therefore, the number of children who attended equals 2x. A total of 1585 people attended. We can now express this algebraically as:
(x + 25) + x + 2x = 1585
The left-hand side of the equation represents the total number of men, women, and children who attended the fair. You should now be able to solve this equation for x.
