Lower Elementary
Question: Jennifer gets $8 each week for allowance. If she has to pay $1 each school day for lunch, how many weeks will it take for her to save enough money to buy a pair of shoes that cost $36?
Answer: 12 weeks
Note: Assume there are no school vacations, school is in session 5 days per week, and Jennifer doesn’t spend her money on anything else. Disregard tax.
Upper Elementary
Question: Mary, who is sixteen years old, is four times as old as her brother. How old will Mary be when she is twice as old as her brother?
Answer: 24 years old
Middle School
Question: Karen has to select a password for her email account. The password has to contain exactly 4 characters. The first 2 characters must be letters and the last 2 must each be a single digit number (0 – 9). If the letters can repeat, but the numbers can’t, how many different passwords are possible for Karen’s password?
Answer: 60,840 possible passwords
Note: Since the password can have repeat letters there are 26 letter choices for the first letter, and 26 for the second. Since the digits are not allowed to repeat she has 10 choices for the first digit, but only 9 for the second. 26 x 26 x 10 x 9 = 60,840.
Algebra and Up
Question: Robert went to the grocery store and bought 3 bananas and 2 apples that cost a total of $2.32. After buying the fruit he decided he would rather have 4 bananas and 1 apple so he exchanged one of the bananas for an apple and paid and additional 14 cents. What is the coast of one banana?
Answer: 52 cents
Note: You can solve this buy setting up the following equations: Let b = cost of bananas and a = cost of apples, then 3b + 2a = 2.32 and 4b + a = 2.46. Solving this system gives b = $0.52 and a = $0.38.
