Amanda has 26 nickels and dimes. We shall call nickels x and dimes y. We can write the following equations: x = 3y -2 or -x +3y = 2 x + y = 26 We can cancel out the x to give 4y = 28 or y = 7 If there are 26 coins in total and 7 of them are dimes then there must be 19 nickels. The number of nickels (19) is two fewer than three times the number of dimes ( 3(7) - 2 = 19).