Re: Not true
The problem with pluralizing students is that you give away the solution to the problem if you state: "the audience consists of adults, a student, and children." Perhaps I should have put on an additional constraint with something like: "(Note: There must be at least one adult)".
The reason this problem is an important one is that algebra students are conditioned to believe that when you have N unknowns, you must have N independent equations. But this is not true. You can solve a wide variety of important problems by having fewer equations than unknowns when you have constraints.
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