Answer: 9
Step-by-step explanation: The reason that students get intimidated
by word problems is they try to look at all the information at once.
The best way to approach a word problem
is to break it down sentence by sentence.
In this problem, let's look at the first part of the sentence.
We know that six less than three times a number is 21.
Let's call the number x.
So we know that six less than three times a number means 3x - 6.
A common mistake would be for students to put 6 - 3x.
However, the word "less than" switches the order around.
So we know that six less than three times a number is 21.
So we can write this as 3x - 6 = 21.
Now we have an equation and we can solve for x.
First add 6 to both sides to get 3x = 27.
Now divide both sides by 3 to get x = 9.
So our answer to this word problem is 9.
