# Math Help - Alegbra/Logic Question

1. ## Alegbra/Logic Question

There are 29 students in Miss Spelling’s class. As a special holiday gift, she bought each of them chocolate letters with which they can spell their names. Unfortunately, some letters cost more than others — for instance, the letter A, which is in high demand, is rather pricey; whereas the letter Q, which almost no one wants, is relatively inexpensive. The price of the chocolate letters for each student in her class is shown in the table below.

 AIDEN – 386 ARI – 209 ARIEL – 376 BLAIRE – 390 CHARLES – 457 CLARE – 334 DEAN – 317 EARL – 307 FRIDA – 273 GABRIEL – 410 IVY – 97 KOLE – 249 LEIA – 317 LEO – 242 MAVIS – 246 NADINE – 453 NED – 236 PAUL – 167 QASIM – 238 RACHEL – 394 RAFI – 231 SAM – 168 TIRA – 299 ULA – 148 VERA – 276 VIJAY – 179 WOLKE – 272 XAVIER – 346 ZERACH – 355

How much would it cost to buy the letters in the name 'Morrissey'?

2. ## Re: Alegbra/Logic Question

This is a very time consuming kind of problem. I shall show you how to start

From the names Earl and Ariel, we can see see that they share the following letters A, E, R, and L. And the letters for Earl cost 307 and those for Ariel cost 376

So E + A + R + L = A + E + L + R = 307

And A + R + I + E + L = (A + E + L + R) + I = 376

But that means 307 + I = 376 so I = 376 - 307 = 69.

Do you see how to proceed?

3. ## Re: Alegbra/Logic Question

dump all of this into matrix equation and solve it. For example AIDEN gets you

A + I + D + E + N = 386 so the first row of your matrix is

1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

and of course the right hand side column is just the prices associated with each name (row).

If the problem is well posed you can solve it using row reduction or what have you.

4. ## Re: Alegbra/Logic Question

Thank you both.
I am only in year eight so I do not quite have a grasp on the solution provided by romsek, but JeffM was easily understandable.
Thanks for helping me out!

5. ## Re: Alegbra/Logic Question

There are 29 students in Miss Spelling’s class. As a special holiday gift, she bought each of them chocolate letters
with which they can spell their names. Unfortunately, some letters cost more than others. For instance, the letter A,
which is in high demand, is rather pricey; whereas the letter Q, which almost no one wants, is relatively inexpensive.
The price of the chocolate letters for each student in her class is shown in the table below.

 AIDEN – 386 ARI – 209 ARIEL – 376 BLAIRE – 390 CHARLES – 457 CLARE – 334 DEAN – 317 EARL – 307 FRIDA – 273 GABRIEL – 410 IVY – 97 KOLE – 249 LEIA – 317 LEO – 242 MAVIS – 246 NADINE – 453 NED – 236 PAUL – 167 QASIM – 238 RACHEL – 394 RAFI – 231 SAM – 168 TIRA – 299 ULA – 148 VERA – 276 VIJAY – 179 WOLKE – 272 XAVIER – 346 ZERACH – 355

How much would it cost to buy the letters in the name MORRISSEY?

Like JeffM, I found some values by subtraction.

. . $\begin{array}{ccc} AIDEN &=& 386 \\ DEAN &=& 317 \\ \hline \end{array}$
. . . . . . . $I \;\;\;\,=\;\;\;69$

. . $\begin{array}{ccc} ARIEL &=& 376 \\ LEIA &=& 317 \\ \hline \end{array}$
. . . . . . $R \;\;\;\,=\;\;\;59$

. . $\begin{array}{ccc} CHARLES &=& 457 \\ RACHEL &=& 394 \\ \hline \end{array}$
. . . . . . . . . $S \;\;\;\,=\;\;\;63$

I'll let you find the values for E, M, O, and Y.

6. ## Re: Alegbra/Logic Question

very clever, the names seem to be chosen with this sort of thing in mind