Question

We're gonna look at how to translate word problems. Here, I have a situation. Jimmy is twice the age of Tommy who is five years younger than Suzie. Find an equation to represent Jimmy's age in terms of Suzie's age. In order to do this problem, I need to actually take the words and translate them into some type of algebraic expression. My first step always whenever I do this is to identify my variables. What information am I giving, and I wanna use a variable to represent that, and what am I looking for? When I read this, I'm trying to find an equation to represent Jimmy's age in terms of Suzie's age, so I need to talk about Jimmy's age, Suzie's age, and since Jimmy is defined... His age is defined in terms of Tommy, Tommy's age, so I'm going to use variables to represent that. You can use any variable you want. I typically try and use a letter that has some type of meaning for what it's representing, just to help me keep straight as I'm working through the problem what I'm dealing with. I'm gonna use J to represent Jimmy's age, I'm gonna use T to represent Tommy's age, and I'm gonna use S to represent Suzie's age. And just by using the letters J, T, and S, it's gonna help me as I work through the problem to remember what they represent. 01:26: Now I'm gonna go through and I'm gonna break it down and I'm gonna write clues above the words to help me. What do I have? I have Jimmy, so that's my J. I'm gonna put a J there. Is twice, so that's two, the age of Tommy. That's T. Right there, I'm given some information. Is usually means an equal sign, so what do I know? I now know Jimmy, so J, equals twice the age of Tommy, so it equals two T. There's my first algebraic equation to help me out. Alright, let's keep going. Tommy who is, so there's my equals to sign, five years younger. Younger, to me, means subtraction and I have five years. Suzie which is S. I think now I can get my second piece of information. Tommy, T, is, equals, five years younger than Suzie, so Suzie's age minus five. Okay, now I'm getting down to what am I looking for. I want to find an equation to represent Jimmy's age, J, in terms of Suzie's age, S, so I wanna relate J and S. What do I know? I can see that I have Jimmy's age in terms of Tommy's age and Tommy's age in terms of Suzie's age, and I want Jimmy's age in terms of Suzie's age. I can take this expression for Tommy's age in terms of Suzie's and I can substitute it in. I get Jimmy, equals two times S minus five, since S minus five is another way to represent Tommy's age. And now I have a relationship between Jimmy's age and Suzie's age.Question 1
In the example, s represents _______'s age.
Responses
A SusieSusie
B SarahSarah
C SallySally
Question 2
In a word problem, what does "is" represent?
Responses
A equalsequals
B adds toadds to
C takes away fromtakes away from
Question 3
What is the answer to this example?
Responses
A j = 2(s - 5)j = 2(s - 5)
B s = 2(j - 5)s = 2(j - 5)

Answer 1

Question 1: A — Susie
Question 2: A — equals
Question 3: A — j = 2(s - 5)