ShmoopTube

00:03

Here’s your shmoop du jour, brought to you by simple equations.

00:06

Such as…you plus Netflix plus Papa John’s equals a depressing Saturday night.

00:14

Five less than six times a number is equal to 20 more than the number. What is the number?

00:22

Okay, this is just one of those “turn words into numbers” type problems.

00:26

We can’t find our magic scepter at the moment,

00:28

so we’re going to have to do this one manually. We’re told that we’re looking for a mysterious

00:34

number…so we’ll just label this variable x.

00:36

Five less than six times a number… or 6x minus 5.

00:41

20 more than the number is just 20 plus x. So our equation is:

00:46

6x - 5 = 20 + x.  All right, Combine like terms...

00:51

...so divide both sides by 5 and we get x = 5.

00:56

And that’s our answer.

Full Transcript