Question

Bob and mark talk about their families. Bob says he has 3 kids, the product of their ages is 72. He gives another clue: the sum of the ages of his children. Mark points out there is still not enough information to accurately guess. Finally, Bob says" my youngest child called justice". Mark can then correctly determine the ages of bob's children. What are the ages?

Answer 1

I can only give possible combinations of the ages. This is because only the product is given. Had the sum of all ages been given, possible combinations would boil down into 1 combination.

3 kids with a youngest. This means that the ages are not the same.
We do prime factorization to get the age combination.

72 ÷ 2 = 36
36 ÷ 2 = 18
18 ÷ 2 =   9
  9 ÷ 3 =   3
  3 ÷ 3 =   1

1 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 3 x 3 = 72

Possible combination with no repeating number.

1 x 8 x 9 = 72
2 x 4 x 9 = 72
4 x 6 x 3 = 72
1 x 6 x 12 = 72