What problem are we solving?
Everything appears to be explicitly stated.
Do you want us to figure out what the original problem was ?
It could have been something like this:
A father gave 26 math problems for his son to solve and said, "I will give you 8 cents for each problem you solve correctly, but you will lose 5 cents for problem you solve incorrectly".
If, at the end they broke even, how many problems did the son get right and how many did he get wrong?
the equation for that would be
8x = 5(26-x)
How can algebra be used to solve this problem?
The boy solved 10 problems correctly at 8 cents a problem for a total of 80 cents, and 16 incorrectly at the cost of 5 cents for a total of 80 cents. Therefore, neither the boy nor his father owed each other anything at the end of the 26 problems.
2 answers
Thanks!