Question

tom had a platter of chocolate wafers. he ate 5 of them and then gave his brother 3 he then moved on to his baseball team of 8 members. the first player to arrive took 1, the 2nd player took 3, and the third player took 5 and so on. when the last player took his, the platter was empty. How many chocolate wafers did tom start with?

Answer 1

Tom started with total 72 chocolate wafers.

Explanation

The number of chocolate wafers taken by 8 members of the baseball team are in the sequence :  $1, 3,5,7,9,11,13,15$

The above sequence is arithmetic sequence with first term(a₁)= 1 and common difference (d) = 2

Formula for Sum of first $n$ terms in arithmetic sequence is....

$S_{n}= \frac{n}{2}[2a_{1}+(n-1)d]$

So, the Sum of 8 terms in that sequence....

$S_{8}= \frac{8}{2}[2(1)+(8-1)(2)]\\ \\ S_{8}= 4[2+7(2)]\\ \\ S_{8}=4(2+14)\\ \\ S_{8}=4(16)=64$

That means, the total number of chocolate wafers taken by the baseball team members is 64.  Tom ate 5 and then gave his brother 3 chocolate wafers at first.

So, the total number of chocolate wafers at starting $=64+5+3=72$