Five farmers have 7, 9, 11, 13 & 14 apple trees, respectively in their orchards. Last year, each of them discovered that every tree in their own orchard bore exactly the same number of apples. Further, if the third farmer gives one apple to the first, and the fifth gives three to each of the second and the fourth, they would all have exactly the same number of apples. What were the yields per tree in the orchards of the third and fourth farmers?

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1. So we consider the 2nd statement first. We can form an equation out of it.
   14x-6=13y+3=9z+3
   Using this, we can understand that the multiple of 14 and the multiple of 13 and 9 must have a difference of 9. The easiest way to ensure that is multiplying it by 9
   14*9=126
   13*9=117
   If the 5th farmer gives 3 apples to the 4th farmer, they would have 123 and 120 apples respectively. However, we also know that the 2nd farmer has 117 apples (13*9=117, and this is a multiple of 9) if the 5th farmer gives 3 apples too the 2nd farmer, the 3rd, 4th and 5th farmers would have 120 apples each.
   Now that we got 120, we should check if the first part of the question makes sense along with it. The equation would be
   7a+1=11b-1=120
   We know that 11*11=121 and 7*17=119. When we add 1 to 119 and subtract 1 from 121, we get 120 for each. In this way, all the farmers have 120 apples each.
   Therefore, the 3rd farmer had a yield of 11 per tree and the 4th farmer had a yield of 9 per tree.

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   1. I apologize for the shoddy grammar I didn’t know how to phrase the answer well.

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   2. I apologize for the shoddy grammar I didn’t know how to phrase the answer well.

      Reply