Question: Oprah has 3500 cars in her collection. If the average number of cars she gives away per year is 50, how many years will it take to reduce her car collection to 500?
Answer with step-by-step thinking: If Oprah wants to have 500 cars left, she will have to give away 3500 - 500 = 3000 cars. Since the average number of cars she gives away per year is 50, it will take her 3000 / 50 = 60 years to give away enough cars to have 500 left over.
So the answer is 60.

Question: John buys dinner plates and silverware. The silverware cost $20. The dinner plates cost 50% as much as the silverware. How much did he pay for everything?
Answer with step-by-step thinking: The dinner plates cost 20 * .5 = $10. So he paid 10 + 20 = $30.
So the answer is 30.

Question: Michael has a lot of matchsticks at home and decides to use them to make miniature models. As he is about to start crafting, he has second thoughts and decides to only use half of his pile of matchsticks. He creates 30 matchsticks houses. If he has now used all of the matchsticks he intended to and each matchstick house uses 10 matchsticks, how many matchsticks did Michael have originally?
Answer with step-by-step thinking:
Michael has used a total of 30 matchstick houses * 10 matchsticks per matchstick house = 300 matchsticks. As he only used half of his collection for crafting, he must have originally had 300 matchsticks * 2 = 600 matchsticks.
So the answer is 600.