Let x represent Anna's age. If John’s age is Anna’s age plus 1 and Tamara is Anna’s decreased by 2, write an expression that represents the sum of Anna’s and John’s age, minus Tamara’s age?

Answer 1

Hi Heather,

Let's start by writing and expression to represent each person's age based on the information in the question:

As stated in the problem, Anna's age can be represented as : x

Since John is Anna's age plus 1, we can represent John's age as : x + 1

Since Tamara's age is Anna's age decreased by 2, we can represent Tamara's age as: x - 2

We can combine the first two expressions to represent the sum and then combine like terms to create an equivalent expression for the sum of Anna's age and John's age:

Anna + John =

x + x + 1 = 2x + 1

Then subtract Tamara's age:

2x + 1 - (x - 2) = 2x + 1 - x + 2 = x + 3

The simplified expression will be x + 3