Question

Mary had \[72\] candy canes. Claire had seven-eighths of the candy canes Mary had. How many candy canes does Claire have?

Answer 1

Hint: In order to find solution to this problem, we will have to first convert this word problem into mathematical format and then after converting into mathematical form that is breaking down into parts and with that after we have all things we require, we will have to complete calculation and then we will get our final answer.

Complete step by step solution:
As we know, we have our problem as a word problem, so we will first convert it into a mathematical problem.
Therefore, breaking down our problem into parts, we get:
Mary had $72$ candy canes, that is: $72$
Claire had seven-eighths of the candy canes, that is: $\dfrac{7}{8}$
Claire had seven-eighths of the candy canes Mary had, that is: $\dfrac{7}{8}\times 72$
Also, it is perfectly correct to write $72$ as $\dfrac{72}{1}$ which is not normally done.
After we have all our terms to complete our calculation, we will complete the calculation.
 Claire had seven-eighths of the candy canes Mary had, that is we can write it as:
$\Rightarrow \dfrac{7}{8}\times \dfrac{72}{1}$
That is seven-eighth of $72$ is $72$ times $\dfrac{7}{8}$.
Therefore, on simplifying, we get:
$\Rightarrow \dfrac{7\times 72}{8\times 1}$
On simplifying, we get our fraction as:
$\Rightarrow \dfrac{504}{8}$
On simplification, that is $504\div 8$ , we get our solution as:
$\Rightarrow 63$
Therefore, Seven-eighths of $72$ is $72$ times $\dfrac{7}{8}$, that comes to $63$.

Therefore, Claire has $63$ candy canes.

Note: A word problem is a few sentences describing a 'real-life' scenario, where a problem needs to be solved in a way of a mathematical calculation.
To solve word problems, we have to read it well. One reason we struggle is because they have trouble with reading in general and not understanding the problem. To turn a word problem into a number sentence, we need to understand the language and concepts of math first, then we can easily solve any word problem.