Explain simply why 250 is the correct answer to: Joanna and Jacques had 40 and 60 gumballs, respectively, in their dishes. They then purchased 4 times the number of gumballs they had initially and added these to their dishes. If they decided to put together their gumballs and shared them equally, how many gumballs did each get?. Explanation:
When Joanna purchased 4 times the number of gumballs she initially had, she added 40 * 4 = 160 gumballs to her dish. The total number of gumballs Joanna had in her dish after buying 160 more is 160 + 40 = 200. At the same time, Jacques bought 60 * 4 = 240 new gumballs. When Jacques added his new 240 gumballs to his dish, the total number of gumballs increased to 240 + 60 = 300 gumballs. When they decided to put together their gumballs, they had 300 + 200 = 500 gumballs altogether. After sharing equally, each person got 500 / 2 = 250 gumballs.