Question

jill sold half her comic books then bought 16 more she now has 36 how many did she start with? help me plz ...?

Answer 1

Alright! In order to solve this you have to work backwards. So, you know her end total is 36. And to get to that she bought 16 books. So:

36 - 16 = 20.

So, after she sold half her books she had 20. To find how many she started with you do the opposite of dividing by 2, multiplying by 2. So:

20 x 2 = 40.

She started with 40 books.

Answer 2

Let us assume the number of books with which Jill started = x
Number of books that Jill sold first is half and then Jill again bought 16 books, making her total number of books to 36.
Then
(x/2) + 16 = 36
(x/2) = 36 - 16
(x/2) = 20
x = 20 * 2
   = 40

From the above deduction, it can be easily concluded that the number of books that Jill started with was 40. I hope that the procedure is clear enough for you to understand.