Question

Jane went to the store and bought a bag of potato chips. After eating 6 chips, she gave half of the remainder to her brother, Phil who gave 7 to his dog and ate the rest. Jane ate 5 more chips and gave half of the remainder to her sister, Mary. Jane ate 10 more chips and emptied the bag by giving 2 to her Mom, who is on a diet. How many chips were in the bag originally and who ate the most chips?

Answer 1

Always start by letting something unknown to be x. In this case let x be the original number of chips in the bag.

Jane had six, so now we have x - 6

Jane gave 1/2(x - 6) to Phil, leaving us with 1/1(x - 6)

And so on, until you get an equation in x to solve.