I'm having trouble with a math story.

Question

Grandma Splendido decided to design a walking path for her flower garden. First, she sketched a stone with flowers around it. There was 1 stone and 4 flowers. She decided that she needed more stones to make a path. She added two more stones, with flowers around them in her sketch. There were 3 stones and 8 flowers. Grandma Splendido was still not happy with her path. However, she didn't know how to add more stones or flowers. Her grandson Ferdie suggested that they find a rule for her path, draw a diagram to see what it will look like, and create a graph to figure out how many flowers to buy. What is the rule for her path?

Answer 1

When she only had 1 stone, she needed 4 flowers.  One on either side and one in front and one in back.  

            

                                                                       x

                                                                   x  O  x

                                                                       x

 

When she had 3 stones,, it took 8 flowers.  Let's see what that would look like:

 

                                                                  x    x   x

                                                               x O   O   O  x

                                                                  x    x   x

 

The next step is to figure out the rule.  Everytime we have a stone, we need a flower on each side.  That means 2 flowers for every stone.  But then we still need to add the flowers on either end.  That means +2.

 

SOOO:

 

if s=the number of stones used

 

The number of flowers needed = 2s+2

 

From here you can easily create your graph  :-)