To isolate x, you must get rid of the 5 on the left side. Since 5 is the denominator, use multiplication to cancel it out: multiply both sides by 5. x divided by 5 and then multiplied by 5 equals x because the multiplication and division cancel each other out. On the other side, the 25 is also multiplied by 5. Instead of cancelling out, it equals 125 because 25 times 5 equals 125.
You can check your answer by plugging the value of x into the equation:
We should work backwards here. Jamie is 12, and ayana is five years younger than jamie. This means that ayana is 7 years old. Mary is twice as old as the 7 year old ayana, which means that Mary is 14 years old.