I am going to do this problem with more of an algebraic approach weather or not its the way your teacher wants you to do it like this.
The way to do things algebraically is to just set variables for what you want to find and set up equations to represent each sentence.
As seen there are hamburgers and chickens in this problem. So let's set the numbers of hamburgers to x, and the numbers of chickens to y.
Now write out each sentence using variables.
1.) Tia sold 78 hamburgers and chicken tenders.
x+y=78
2.) If she sold 24 more hamburgers than chicken tenders.
x=y+24
Now that we have the 2 equations, its time to solve.
Since we have x=y+24, we can replace the x in the first equation with the second equation
y+24+y=78
2y+24=78
Now we can subtract 24 from both sides.
2y=54
Simplify
y=27
Solve for x
x=27+24=51
Done!
