Stanley has 52 pens. He divided some of his pens equally among 4 friends. Stanley has 20 pens left. How many pens did each friend​ get? Stanley gave nothing ​pen(s) to each friend.

Answer 1

I am unsure about the last sentence in the problem. However, I can answer the first part.

First, we need to figure out the total of pens that he gave away.

52 - 20 = 32 pens given away

Since we know he divided them among 4 friends, then we should divide the 32 by 4.

32 ÷ 4 = 8

Stanley gave 8 pens to each of his friends.

Answer 2

Hello Tati,

I had a bit of confusion with the last sentence of the prompt "Stanley gave nothing pen(s) to each friend". Is that part of the instructions or is that the given answer?

Aside from that, my understanding of how to approach the problem was this:

Step 1: Stanley originally has 52 pens, he only has 20 left, therefore we need to find out how many pens he gave away

Step 2: To find how many pens he gave away, we do 52-20 to give us the number of pens he no longer has, which is 32

Step 3: To figure out how many pens each friend got, we do 32/4 (32 pens divided or distributed to 4 people) and get that each friend received 8 pens.

I hope that this was helpful!