Carter has 10 fewer marbles than April. Nicholas has 3 times as many marbles as April. If April has m marbles, which expression BEST represents how many marbles Carter and Nicholas have altogether?

Answer 1

These really got me when I first tried to learn them.

If Carter has 10 less than m, that's m - 10.

Three times as many as m is 3m.

What's difficult for some is realizing that a variable by itself is ONE of that variable. We don't call you 1 Bella, but if 3 more Bellas walked in the room, we'd have 4 Bellas.

m - 10 + 3m = 4m - 10.