If we broke down the problem to 62=x+y (y being the smaller number) we can solve from there. If y is the smaller number, then y= x-16 Therefore if we plug that back in we get 62=x+x-16 which simplifies to 62=2x-16. Now we just solve for x which is the bigger number and we get 39. But we still have y which is 16 less so we subtract 16 from 39 to get 23.
