Question

if the area of a certain desert is three times the area of another desert the sum of their areas is 16,000,000 square miles find the area of each desert

Answer 1

First divide 16 mil by 4. That gets you 4 mil. Then (since one of the deserts is three times the size of the other) multiply one of them by three. Now, you have 12,000,000 and 4,000,000.