Question

Larry and Louise are siblings. Louise has twice as many brothers as sisters. Larry has the same number of brothers as sisters. How many boys and how many girls are in the family? Solve without using algebra, use pictures, arithmetic etc.

Answer 1

its 4 boys and 3 girls in the family

guess and check is a good method

Answer 2

I think @campbell_st is right. I don't know how he did it, but I did it as follows: I set up a two rows, one for BOYS and one for GIRLS. I put a tick mark in each row to account for Larry (boy) and Louise (girl). We know Larry has equal numbers brothers and sisters, but right now he has no brothers, so I add 1 tick to the boys row. Louise needs a sister, however, so I add 1 tick to the girls row. Now the problem is that Larry must have equal bros and sis, so we need to add 1 more tick to the boys row (bringing it to 3). But NOW the problem is that Louise has 3x brothers, so to fix that we add 1 tick to the girls row (bringing it to 3). But NOW, Larry doesn't have equal bros and sis, so we add 1 MORE tick to the boys row (now totaling 4).

Now we can see that Larry has 3 brothers and 3 sisters. And Louise has 2 sister and 4 brothers, so everyone is happy (except for the parents that have to feed them all).

Answer 3

well its simple guess and check

Girl 2 brothers 1 sister

Boy 1 brother and 2 sisters..

so not 2 and 1

The girl can't have 3 brothers and there would 1.5 sisters

so try

Girl 4 brothers 2 sister

Boy 3 brothers 3 sisters