Question

The number of right-handed students in a mathematics class is nine times the number of left-handed students. The total number of students in the class is 30. How many right-handed students are in the class? How many left-handed students are in the class?

explain it step by step

Answer 1

Let's start by assigning variables to the unknown quantities in the problem.

Let "R" represent the number of right-handed students.
Let "L" represent the number of left-handed students.

From the problem, we know that the total number of students in the class is 30. So we can write the equation:

R + L = 30

We are also given that the number of right-handed students is nine times the number of left-handed students. So we can write another equation:

R = 9L

Now we have a system of two equations with two variables:

R + L = 30
R = 9L

To solve this system, we can substitute the value of R from the second equation into the first equation:

9L + L = 30
10L = 30
L = 3

Now that we know the number of left-handed students is 3, we can substitute this value back into either of the original equations to solve for R:

R = 9(3)
R = 27

So there are 27 right-handed students and 3 left-handed students in the class.