1/2 of the birds at a pet store are yellow. tara buys 1 of the yellow birds. then 1/3 of the yellow birds at the store are yellow. how many yellow birds were at the pet store before tara bought one?

well, first I have to do it

b - 1 = total birds at end
yellow birds:
(1/2) b - 1 = (1/3)(b-1)

b/2 = 1 -1/3 + b/3

3b/6 -2b/6 =2/3
b/6 = 2/3
b = 4
yellow = b/2 = 2

put 4 balls in a box, half of the yellow, and do the experiment

so,its 2/6?

Two of the four birds in the store were yellow.

then when you take a yellow out, you have 2 blue and one yellow remaining

Thank you,Damon!

You are welcome :)

I'm still confused as to how you got the 4

Me too

Sure! Let's break it down step by step in a way that is easy to understand for a 3rd-grade student.

1. At the pet store, half of the birds are yellow. Let's say there were some birds at the store, and we don't know the exact number. So, let's imagine there were 10 birds in total. Half of them, or 5 birds, would be yellow.

2. Tara buys one of the yellow birds. So, now we need to subtract that bird from the total number of yellow birds. If we had 5 yellow birds before, and Tara buys one, we are left with 4 yellow birds.

3. After Tara buys, it says that one-third of the yellow birds at the store are yellow. Let's calculate what one-third of 4 is. We divide 4 by 3, which gives us 1 and a remainder of 1. Since we are talking about whole birds, we ignore the remainder and only take the whole number part. Therefore, one-third of 4 is 1.

4. Now, let's add back the bird Tara bought to the one-third of the remaining yellow birds. It means we have 1 yellow bird from Tara's purchase and 1 more from the remaining yellow birds. Adding them together gives us 2 yellow birds.

So, in conclusion, there were 2 yellow birds at the pet store before Tara bought one.