Two girls are practising their arithmetic. They take two different numbers.

Question

Two girls are practising their arithmetic. They take two different numbers. The first girl finds half the sum of the numbers and divides her answer by 3. The second girl, multiplies the sum of the numbers by 3 and divides her answer by 2. They then divide the first girl's answer by the second girl's answer This should give an answer of

 

 

 

a. 1/3      b. 1/9      c. 2/3     d. There is not enough information to tell

 

Answer 1

Both girls are dividing the sum by 2 at some point.  That's because the first girl takes half the sum as the first step, and the second girl divides her answer by the 2 as the last step.

 

So the only step that would make a different in their results would be the other step each one takes.

 

The first girl divided by 3 and the second girl multiplied by 3.  So the first girl's number should be 1/3 of 1/3 of the second girl's number, which is 1/9  So the answer is b.