Question

John and jivanti together have 45 marbles . Both of them lost 5 marbles each , and the product of the number of marbles they now have is 124. We would like to find out how many marble they had to start with.

Answer 1

Let 'x' be the number of marbles John had.

$\therefore$ Jivanti will have 45 - x marbles.

[$\because$ the total number of marbles is 45]

As both of them lost 5 marbles each; marbles they now have will be x - 5 and 40 - x respectively.

$\Rightarrow$ Product of the number of marbles = (x - 5) (40 -x) $\therefore 40x-x^2-200+5x=124$ [$\because$ the product is 124]

$\Rightarrow x2-45x+324=0$