how much does mrs. roden pay for the six chairs? easy i thought. take the total amount that mrs. , the 1233, subtract the 750, divide by six. right? wrong. a couple minutes later i had the iphone out, the calculator function was on, i still couldn't figure it out. soon i was daydreaming about details we didn't know. what kind of table was it? where did she buy it? what do the chairs look like? what do we know about mrs. roden. i was within an inch of pulling out a slide rule. it's been 30 years since i had to do intense math without a texas instrument next to me but i was embarrassed just not too embarrassed to mention my math deficiencies on the radio the following day. and sure enough, plenty of callers couldn't figure out the answer either. it took an arero space engineer to lay out and solve my fourth grade son's extra credit problem. the equation he told me looks like this. 6 x the number of chairs by each one's cost plus x plus 750

take the total amount that mrs. roden spent the $1,233, subtract the $750, divide by six, right?utes later i had the iphone out, i still couldn't figure it out. soon i was daydreaming about details we didn't know. what kind of a table was it? where did she buy it? is it clean? what do those chairs look like? and what exactly do we know about her? i was within an inch of pulling out a slide role. it's been 30 years since i've had to do any math without a texas instrument next to me. i was still embarrassed, but not too embarrassed to mention it on the radio the following day. and sure enough, plenty of callers couldn't figure out the answer either. it took an aerospace engineer, literally a rocket scientist named josh to correctly lay out and solve my fourth grade son's extra credit problem. the equation he told me looks like this. 6 x, the number of chairs multiplied by the cost, plus x, plus the table, which is $750 more than one chair equals $1,233, the total cost. here's what it looks like, you work it out, you get $414 for the six chairs, or $69 per chair.