Solving Math Word Problems in Numbers Using Algebra Part 2

This is the fourth part of the Word Problem Solving on Number Problems and this is the continuation of the Solving Word Problems in Numbers in Algebra.  In this post, we discuss more examples on how to solve number problems. We start with the fourth example.

Example 4

The sum of three consecutive numbers is 78. What are the three numbers?

Solution

In the previous post in this series, we have already discussed how to solve problems about two consecutive odd integers. In this example, there are three consecutive integers, not odd and not even. As we can see, 11, 12, and 13 are consecutive integers and we only add 1 each time to get the next number. This means that if x is the smallest number, then x + 1 and x + 2 are the next two integers. » Read more