Peanuts by Charles Schulz for February 23, 2021

I was amazed to find a parking meter that took coins the other day. Do kids today even know what dimes and quarters are?

I used to hate word problems like this. But is the answer 13 dimes and 7 quarters?

if you studied beforehand, Miss Reichardt, you wouldn’t be asking for help

13 dimes, 7 quarters

So it’s a system of equations:

d+q=20

10d+25q+90=25d+10q

You can substitute every variable d in the second equation with (20-q), to make:

10(20-q)+25q+90=25(20-q)+10q

Which becomes

200-10q+25q+90=500-25q+10q

Which becomes

290+15q=500-15q

Which becomes

30q=210

Finally, you can find that q=7, and substitute that into d+q=20 to find that d=13.

I can help – 7 quarters and 13 dimes.

Patty is too young to be going through “the change” unless it is puberty…

Oh those awful story problems! Often listed as “extra credit” on tests. I never did them (I have enough trouble with figures, thanks) and I always suspected she took points off for not doing them.

What happened to Pigpen, I miss him

PP, I just hope you don’t ask ME for help! Just read the answers above and still too stupid to get it…MATH! EEEWWW! Isn’t there a remedy against it?

I always hated these torture devices. And I’m good at math.

I felt the same way in arithmetic and maths classes Petty.

13 dimes and 7 quarters

None, after taxes.

I can relate to Peppermint Patty’s call for help.

This seems like advanced math (algebra?) for an elementary school student.

On the Peanuts Wiki site (https://peanuts.fandom.com/wiki/February_1974_comic_strips), if you hover your mouse over the description, it’ll give you the answer to the question…

My answer: $3.50!

don’t look at me……

I know EXACTLY how you feel PP.

My answer to these type of problems is “Let’s go have a beer.”

Yeah, I always said to myself Move on… at that point, too.

I’m with you Patti!

I am convinced that there is a math gene and some people have it and others don’t.

I have it and I can solve the problem. I just don’t know why I know how to solve the problem.

I must have lost my mind. I had As calculus when I was in college. I now can’t solve this problem.

I’m with you, Peppermint Patty. That almost made my head explode.

There is an infinite number of answers that solve this problem. 7 dimes and 1 quarter works. As does 8 dimes and 2 quarters, and 50 dimes and 44 quarters. There just has to be 6 more dimes than quarters.

No soap, radio!

20 coins of dimes and quarters MUST add up to more than 90 cents!

13 dimes, 7 quarters.

The answer is Louis the Millionth

Any number of dimes and quarters where you have 6 fewer quarters than dimes will work:6 d and 0 q = 60 cents, flipped is 1.50. 90 cents more.10d and 4 q = 2 dollars, flipped is 2.90. 90 cents more. 15 d and 9 q = 3.75, flipped is 4.65. 90 cents more. etc. etc.There is not enough info to determine how may dimes and quarters he has.

That doesn’t even make sense.

A buck three eighty?!!

Yes, Help!

The unwillingness many people show to the exercise of rigorous quantitative reasoning is why Las Vegas makes so much money, payday loan sharks are so successful, credit card companies can get away with predatory interest rates, and politicians can pass soak-the-poor tax laws.

PUNT!

God, I hated school

Come again for Big Fudge? Happy Tuesday.

Be safe my friends.

I can relate. Currently, I’m having a really tough math unit, and it’s kinda getting on my nerves. I finally understand it now, but I hope that I can raise my grade a wee bit.

He would have 13 dimes and 7 quarters. Thirteen dimes plus seven quarters would equal 3.05 while 13 quarters (3.25) plus 7 dimes would be 3.95 and this concludes the boring math lesson for today.

I once called my wife in NY from a business convention in France. It was 3am there (9pm here), and I thought it was a good moment to catch her after dinner. I was also in high spirits after a slightly wild party with colleagues. I caught her in the middle of struggling with our son’s homework… She did not think great the fact that I was having fun, and here I found myself, at 3am, tipsy in a street of Cannes, Côte d’Azur, trying to figure out a very similar maths problem (I remember a bath tub was involved).

The whole point of word problems is to teach you to apply math to real life. Now THAT statement should get a bunch of responses.

Life is just one, neverending word problem. With no Answer Key in the back.

So where in life would a math problem like this be beneficial? If it was important there would probably be a phone app out there for it.

I swear the teacher is gonna give her a detention if she does not stop screaming

13 dimes and 7 quarters

For the curious, 13 quarters and 7 dimes.

I do not have a master’s degree in math. But think this problem has four unknowns. It would require a matrix inversion to solve it. Inverting a 4×4 matrix is tedious. I’ll go by trial and error method like Archimedes did when he developed the calculus basics.

I thought it was a trick question! dimes+ quarters=20.

There are many fine solutions in the comments. Now all Peppermint Patty has to do is get Snoopy to type it up.

I’m sure it will work out fine…

Seven quarters and thirteen dimes

Interesting. I didn’t know they had Common Core math back when this strip first debuted.

I was a whiz at algebra in high school, 55 years ago, and wrote down the equations but couldn’t recall how to work them. So just started guessing, beginning with eight quarters and 12 dimes; second guess was right—it didn’t take any time at all.

All I know is he has twenty coins made up of quarters and dimes.

Just had wise-@$$ epiphany; STILL is 20 coins. Problem asked for “how many dimes and quarters does he have”, “not how many dimes and how many quarters”. That would probably be a Sally answer; she just plows through with her own logic!

This was fun! Thanks Everyone for playing nice.

Help is right.

Using big numbers over-complicates it. The differences in value between a dime and a quarter is 15 cents, so 15*(d-q)=90, d-q=6. Add d+q=20, 2d=26, d=13, q=7.

That’s a riddle, not a math problem. :-)

42

Easy: he would still have 20 dimes and quarters, aka coins!

Thirteen dimes and seven quarters, I think. Took me all day to figure that out.

The answer is ZERO. I would have paid somebody off to figure it out for me.

I always hated those kind of math queries and still hate such all these years later. Ugh!!