The students in the cooking club brought sugar to class. they each brought 3, 4, 5, 3, and 5 cups of sugar, respectively. they divided the sugar evenly so that each student received the same number of cups of sugar. how many cups of sugar did each student get? a. 2 b. 3 c. 4 d. 5

The students bought 3 + 4 + 5 + 3 + 5 cups altogether, and we want to distribute those evenly. We could add them up and do division, or we could just shift some cups around. If we take a cup away from each of the 5-cup portions and add it to each of the 3-cup portions, the sum now looks like

(3 + 1) + 4 + (5 - 1) + (3 + 1) + (5 - 1)

or, simplifying:

4 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 4

Everyone's got the same amount of sugar now, and that amount is 4 cups.

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