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Algebra question

I'm thinking re the latest vid of @mindyourdecisions

No need to view his vid. Here's the problem –

Brian has some boxes of paper clips. Some boxes hold 10 clips and some boxes hold 100. He has some paper clips left over. He has 3 more boxes with 100 paper clips than he has boxes with 10 paper clips. He has 2 fewer paper clips left over than he has numbers of boxes with 100 paper clips. What number of paper clips could he have?

  • let x1 be the number of boxes with 10 clips
  • x2 be the number of boxes with 100 clips
  • n be the number of leftover clips

I thought of 100x2 = 10x1 + 300

Is that equation right? Something tells me I shouldn't equate 100x2 to 10x1 plus 300. Something tells me I shouldn't make an equation re number of clips as it isn't explicit in the problem. I'm confused.

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