Tom had a platter of chocolate wafers. he ate 5 of them and then gave his brother 3 he then moved on to his baseball team of 8 members. the first player to arrive took 1, the 2nd player took 3, and the third player took 5 and so on. when the last player took his, the platter was empty. how many chocolate wafers did tom start with?

Tom started with total 72 chocolate wafers.

Explanation

The number of chocolate wafers taken by 8 members of the baseball team are in the sequence :  

The above sequence is arithmetic sequence with first term(a₁)= 1 and common difference (d) = 2

Formula for Sum of first terms in arithmetic sequence is....

So, the Sum of 8 terms in that sequence....

That means, the total number of chocolate wafers taken by the baseball team members is 64.  Tom ate 5 and then gave his brother 3 chocolate wafers at first.

So, the total number of chocolate wafers at starting

9x