Question

the population pf a city is 2,500. if the number of males is 240 more than the number of females how many males and females are there in the city

Answer 1

You need to represent the number of males in terms of females.

Explanation:

Since you know the number of males relative to females, it makes sense to represent the number of females as a variable, let's say f.

So then the number of males is f+240 and we know that the number of males plus the number of females is 2500. Knowing this, we can write an equation: f+(f+240)=2500. I put the number of males in brackets there just to make it easy to recognize.

This equation can be condensed into 2f+240=2500 and then solved:

2f=2500−240
f=2500−2402
f=1130

Then, we know the number of females, and we can solve for the number of males from here using our male formula: males=f+240. You should then get 1370 as the number of males.

Checking this answer, we see that 1130 + 1370 does equal 2500.