Mrs Catchpoles' Instructions

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Mrs Catchpole gives the following instructions to her Year 6 class:

Think of a number. Subtract 13 from this number to get the first result. Go back to the original number and subtract 5 to get the second result. Multiply the first and second results together to get the final answer.

Richard obtains a final answer of 0. What number might he have thought of? Give all possibilities.  

Comments

  1. Rithvik31 August 2022 at 07:50

    To solve this one, we need to create some equations.
    Let x be the number that Richard started off with.

    x - 13 ------> First result
    x - 5 ----> Second result

    (x-13)(x-5) = 0
    To get an answer of 0 when multiplying, either x - 13 = 0 or x - 5 = 0

    This gives us an answer of x = 13 or x = 5

    This means all of the possibilities that Richard could have thought of initially are 5 and 13

    ReplyDelete

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