The income from the school car wash is one, five, and ten dollar bills came to a total of $355. If there are 120 bills all together, and twice as many one dollar bills as five and ten dollar bills combined, how many bills of each denomination are there?

Question

How do I get three questions so I can turn them into a matrix?
So far, I have,
n+f+t=355
n+f+t=120
2n=f+t
I have no clue as to if my equations are correct. I also have no clue what I'm doing, as far as word problems go. I can work out matrixes fine, but I don't understand word problems well.

Answer 1

The total value is 355. You have just counted the bills, rather than adding their values. Clearly, n+f+t cannot be both 355 and 120!

n+5f+10t = 355
n+f+t = 120
n = 2(f+t)

The way you wrote the last equation, you indicated that adding the 5's and 10's you had twice as many bills as the ones.

You really should not have had "no clue". You just need to check the meanings of the words against the meanings of the expressions.