Thread: Too thick to solve this problem!!!!

A housewife buys a certain amount of beef at £4 per kilo and the same amount of sausages at £3 per kilo. If she had split the money she spent equally between the beef and sausages she would have got 2 kilos more. How much did she spend

Originally Posted by bonbhoy

A housewife buys a certain amount of beef at £4 per kilo and the same amount of sausages at £3 per kilo. If she had split the money she spent equally between the beef and sausages she would have got 2 kilos more. How much did she spend

It is worded in a confusing sense but I think I understand it. Let represent the money she spend on sausages. Also is the money she spend on beef because she spilt the money equally. Since she can buy more sausages then beef (they are less expensive) the difference between them is 2 (because she gets 2 more kilos). Now place that into an equation. If she spends yen on sausages then she gets kilos because they are worth (3 yen per kilo). Similarily she gets kilos of beef. Thus, their difference is 2:

To solve this you need to find the common denominator. Which is 12, and multiply both sides by 12:

thus,

thus,


Thus, she brought 24 kilos for both of them. Thus, a total of 48 kilograms of meat where brough.

Originally Posted by bonbhoy

A housewife buys a certain amount of beef at £4 per kilo and the same amount of sausages at £3 per kilo. If she had split the money she spent equally between the beef and sausages she would have got 2 kilos more. How much did she spend

Let denote the mass of beef bought and be the amount spent.

Then:



Now if instead is spent on beef and also on sausage these
buy of beef and of sausage. As the sum
of these is more than previously we have:

,

but so:

,

which has solution , or pounds

These numbers seem implausibly large given the scenario.

RonL