The ratio of dales pencils to max’s pencils is 8 to 5. Dale lost 9 pencils and now has the same amount as max. how many pencils did dale start out with?

Answer 1

Dale had 8x pencils
Max had 5x pencils, (notice the ratio is 8x : 5x = 8 : 5)

after the loss , Dale has 8x - 9
he now has the same as Max, so

8x - 9 = 5x

take over