Question: Donna bought 3 times as many pencils as Marcia did. Marcia bought double the number of pencils as Cindi did. How many pencils did Donna and Marcia buy altogether if Cindi spent $30 on $0.50 pencils?
Answer: Cindi bought 30 / 0.50 = 60 pencils. Marcia bought 2 * 60 = 120 pencils. Donna bought 3 * 120 = 360 pencils. Altogether, Donna and Marcia bought 120 + 360 = 480 pencils. The answer is 480.

Question: Jenna is buying concert tickets for her group of five friends. She's able to get two of the tickets from the concert website for $50 each before they sell out. A scalper offers to sell her two more tickets for 240% of the normal price, but Jenna convinces him to give her $10 off that total payment. Finally, one of her friends gets a discounted ticket through her job for 60% of the normal price. How much do Jenna's friends pay for their tickets in total?
Answer: First calculate the price of the two normally priced tickets by multiplying the price and the quantity: $50 * 2 = $100. Then calculate the scalper's initial asking price by multiplying the normal cost of two tickets by 240%: $100 * 2.4 = $240. Then subtract the $10 discount Jenna negotiated: $240 - $10 = $230. Now calculate the price of the discounted ticket Jenna's friend gets through her job by multiplying the normal ticket price by 60%: $50 * .6 = $30. Finally, add up the price of all the tickets to find the total: $100 + $230 + $30 = $360. The answer is 360.

Question: Joseph gave 23 cards to each of his 15 students and had 12 cards left. How many cards did Joseph have at first?
Answer: He gave 23 cards each to 15 students for a total of 23 * 15 = 345 cards. He has 12 cards left, so originally the number of cards was 345 + 12 = 357 cards. The answer is 357.

Question: Jacob has half the number of shoes Edward has. Edward has 3 times the number of shoes Brian has. If Brian has 22 pairs of shoes, how many pairs of shoes do they have in total?
Answer:
Edward has 3 * 22 = 66 pairs of shoes. Jacob has 66 / 2 = 33 pairs of shoes. All of them have 22 + 66 + 33 = 121 pairs of shoes in total. The answer is 121.