Find two numbers with a sum of 20 and a difference of 14.

Question

asked Mar 12, 2019 221k views

1 Answer

Eelco Hoogendoorn · Answer 1 · 2019-03-17T16:18:11+0000

Let these two numbers be

and

. Clearly,
$x\\eq y$ , because
$|x-y|=0\\eq14$ . Let's assume
x<y

. Then

$\begin{cases}x+y=20\\y-x=14\end{cases}$

From the second equation, we can obtain
y=x+14

, so substituting for

in the first equation gives

$x+(x+14)=2x+14=20\implies 2x=6\implies x=3$

which means
y=3+14=17

.