marcus is two times older than carlos. if the sum of their ages is 33, how old is carlos

Answer 1

Being that Carlos’ age is unknown, you have to use ‘x’ to represent his age. If Marcus is two times older than Carlos, you have to use ‘2x’ to represent Marcus’ age. Since the sum of their ages is 33, your equation would be 2x+x=33. To solve it, you have to combine the variables so that would be 2x+x= 3x. So now your equation is 3x=33, so what you have to do is divide 33 by 3 and you will solve for x (Carlos’ age). When you get that number, you have to multiply that by 2 in order to get Marcus’ age since he is 2 times older than Carlos