Chris and Marie have 36 coins that are nickels and dimes. If the value of the coins is $3.00, how any more dimes than nickels do they have?

Question

Please, I need help with this question which I am so lost in. I don't even know where to begin. Thank you so much! Help is very much needed.

Answer 1

What don't we know? What are we trying to find?

We are trying to figure out how many nickles and how many dimes the two have.

Since we don't know these numbers, and are trying to find them, define:

x = the number of nickels they have

y = the number of dimes they have

What do we know? We know they have 36 coins, and that they have $3 total. Can you translate this given information into equations involving x and y?

(I'm not sure what you've seen in your class so far, sometimes books/teachers explain this only using one variable - if that's the case, we can approach it the same way here as well)