Question

In university A , the number of graduate students was approximately 26,000 fever than the number of undergraduate students. If the number of the undergraduate students was n, how many graduate students attend university A?

Answer 1

There are two sets of students in University A: Graduate and Undergraduate students.

The number of undergraduate students is n.

The number of graduate students was approximately 26,000 fewer than the number of undergraduate students (n). This means that if we subtract the number of graduate students from undergraduate students, we would get approximately 26,000 students.

We can write this last statement as a mathematical equation as follows:

$\begin{gathered} \text{ \# of Undergraduate Students }-\text{ \# of Graduate Students }=26,000 \\ \text{ Since we know that \# of Undergraduate Students is }n,\text{ we can rewrite the equation above as:} \\ n-\text{ \# of Graduate Students }=26,000 \\ \\ \text{Subtract }n\text{ from both sides} \\ -\text{ \# of Graduate Students }=26,000-n \\ \\ \text{Multiply through by }-1 \\ -1(-\text{ \# of Graduate Students )}=-1(26,000-n) \\ \\ \therefore\text{ \# of Graduate Students }=n-26,000 \end{gathered}$

Thus, the number of Graduate students is

$n-26,000$