Answer this question:Joe and Adam built a garden wall with three courses of bricks. They realized the wall was too low and added 2 more courses. If each course of the wall had 400 bricks, and they took out half of the bricks in the last course to allow easy checkup of the garden, calculate the total number of bricks the wall has.
When they added two more courses for the wall, the number of courses became 3 + 2 = 5. Since each course has 400 bricks, the total number of bricks for 5 courses is 5 * 400 = 2000. To allow for an easy checkup of the wall, they removed 1 / 2 * 400 = 200 bricks from the last course of the wall. In total, the wall has 2000 - 200 = 1800 bricks.
The answer is 1800.

Answer this question:John manages to run 15 mph for his whole 5-mile race. The next fastest guy ran the race in 23 minutes. How many minutes did he win the race by?
He runs the race in 5 / 15 = 1 / 3 of an hour. So he runs the race in 60 / 3 = 20 minutes. That means he beat the next fastest guy by 23 - 20 = 3 minutes.
The answer is 3.

Answer this question:There were 30 women and 20 men who attended the party. After few hours, 2/5 of the total number of people left. If 9 men left the party, how many more women stayed at the party than men?
There were 30 + 20 = 50 attendees at the party. A total of 50 x 2 / 5 = 20 people left the party. Nine of those who left were men while 20 - 9 = 11 of them were women. So, 30 - 11 = 19 women stayed at the party. And 20 - 9 = 11 men stayed at the party. Thus, 19 - 11 = 8 more women than men stayed at the party.
The answer is 8.

Answer this question:Leila went to the supermarket to get some groceries. Then she headed to her mechanic to get her automobile fixed. If fixing her automobile cost $350 which was $50 more than thrice the amount she spent at the supermarket, how much has she spent altogether?
Reversing the steps to obtain the amount she spent at the supermarket, $50 less than $350 is $350 - $50 = $300. If $300 was thrice the amount she spent at the supermarket, then the amount spent at the supermarket was $300 / 3 = $100. In addition to what she spent fixing her auto, she spent $100 + $350 = $450 altogether.
The answer is 450.