Ricardo lost 6 golf balls while playing yesterday. he bought a box of 12 golf balls, then lost 4 on the course today. he now has 18 golf balls. how many golf balls did ricardo have to start with? what’s the first step to figuring this problem?

Ricardo had to start with 16 golf balls.

Explanation

First we will assume that the number of golf balls in starting was

He lost 6 golf balls while playing yesterday, that means remaining number of the balls

Today he bought 12 golf balls , so now the number of balls

Then he lost 4 balls on the course today, so the remaining number of balls

The question says that he now has 18 golf balls, that means...

So, Ricardo had to start with 16 golf balls.

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step-by-step explanation:

for this case we must apply distributive property to the following expression:

the distributive property states that:

then, when applying the property we have to multiply the -2 for each term within the parenthesis: