Question

Darell and edmond are training for a marathon. darell runs 4 kilometers at a time while edmond prefers to run in blocks of 8 kilometers. at the end of a month, they realize that they have run same total number of kilometers. what is the smallest number of kilometers that each must have run?

Answer 1

We are trying to find the Least Common Multiple. This is a number that both 4 and 8 can be multiplied by a whole number to achieve, more specifically, the minimum of that list of numbers. This one is really simple. Since 8 is a multiple of 4 (4 x 2 = 8), the LCM is 8! (8 is also a multiple of 8 because 8 x 1 = 8).

So the answer is 8.