Will fan and Medal!

A company distributes free boxes of paperclips to all the workers in x offices. Each office has 8 more departments than the number of offices. The number of workers in each department is 4 less than the number of departments in each office. Each worker is given 3 boxes of paperclips.

Which expression shows the number of departments in each office?

Question

Will fan and Medal!

A company distributes free boxes of paperclips to all the workers in x offices. Each office has 8 more departments than the number of offices. The number of workers in each department is 4 less than the number of departments in each office. Each worker is given 3 boxes of paperclips.

Which expression shows the number of departments in each office?

clongoria2 · Answer

A. x
B. x + 8
C. x + 4
D. 3x(x+8)(x+4)

jchick · Answer

I am not sure at all but I believe the answer is D

clongoria2 · Answer

The answer isn't D.  It was wrong when i did that.

jchick · Answer

"Each office has 8 more departments than the number of offices." The number of offices is a given: 'x' represents that. To add 8 to the number of offices would then represent the total number of departments that each office has. Therefore the answer should be x+8. BTW, to help yourself visualize this stuff a little better, substitute easy values like 10 into variables like 'x'. It will look a lot clearer then.

jchick · Answer

Does that help you at all?