One sixth of the candies in a bag of m&ms are orange. If there are 15 orange candies, how many m&ms are in the bag?

Question

How do I put this into an equation and solve it? 

Answer 1

"One sixth of the candies in a bag of m&ms are orange. If there are 15 orange candies, how many m&ms are in the bag?"

 

Let x = number of M&M's in the bag

 

"One sixth of x are orange. If there are 15 orange candies; what is x?"

"One sixth of x is 15; what is x?"

       (1/6) * x  = 15               [in word (story) problems, "of" usually means multiply]

               x = 90             [multiply both sides by 6]

Answer 2

Hi Kendra, set up a proportion to solve this problem. Let x represent the total number of candies in the bag.

 

Proportion:

 

1/6 = 15/x

 

Cross-multiply:

 

1 * x = 6 * 15

 

x = 90

 

There are 90 candies in the bag.

 

Questions?

Answer 3

You basically have a question that simply asks:

"15 is 1/6 of how many?"

 

Letting m = total # of m&ms in the bag;

 

m/6 = 15

m = 6(15)

m = 90 total m&ms