I've been reading the, 'The Man of Numbers' book by Keith Devlin about Leonardo of Pisa who wrote the historic book on arithmetic around 1202 CE.
One of the problems, on page 70, goes as follows:
Three merchants find a purse lying in the road. The first asserts that the discovery would make him twice as wealthy as the other two combined. The second claims his wealth would triple if he kept the purse, and the third claims his wealth would increase five fold. How much concurrency would each receive.
Here is what I have so far.
//x for merchant one
//y for merchant two
//z for merchant three
x + y + z = 3
//I'm thinking 2y for the other two merchants, twice as much for the third 4x
4x + 2y = 6
3x = 3
This is about as far as I get. I realize that for five fold, five would be involved as a coefficient next to a variable but I can't seem to get any further.
So am I on the right track having three variables to represent each merchant? Although, I'm thinking the '= 3' seems redundant. Perhaps each of the variables represents the value of concurrency each would get.
Any thoughts any one
Thanks,