Question

Mark sold half his video game collection to his brother and then bought 16 more games at a yard sale. He now has 36 games. How many did he start with?

Answer 1

Mark had 40 games to start with.

Explanation:

You know this because you can take away the 16 games he bought, which leaves him with half of what he started with which is 20. And if 20 is half of his games you can double it to give you his starting number of games.

:)

Answer 2

Explanation:

Let's start by using algebra to solve the problem.

Let x be the number of games that Mark started with.

Mark sold half of his games to his brother, so he sold x/2 games. This means he had x - x/2 = x/2 games after selling half to his brother.

He then bought 16 more games, so he had x/2 + 16 games.

Finally, we're told he now has 36 games, so we can set up the equation:

x/2 + 16 = 36

Simplifying the equation, we get:

x/2 = 20

Multiplying both sides by 2, we get:

x = 40

Therefore, Mark started with 40 games.