Jacob H. answered • 01/25/22
Engineering Grad For Math and Science Tutoring
Let’s let:
a=the first number mentioned
b=the second number mentioned
We know the sum of the two numbers is 29 which means: a+b=29
We also know the first number mentioned is 5 more than the second number. So let’s call the first number: b+5
Therefore, we can substitute (b+5) for a:
(b+5)+b=29
*note: I put b+5 in parentheses for visual purposes, not because of order of operations*
Now we can solve for the second number (b):
b+5+b=29 => b+b=24 => 2b=24 => b=12
-4 -4
Now we found what the second number is, by looking at the original stated problem, we know the first number is 5 more than that:
a=b+5 => a=12+5 => a=17
It is always good to verify the solution! We can do that by applying it to the original word problem:
a+b=29 => 17+12=29 => 29=29
