Larry sold twice as many magazines as jan. henry sold 8 more magazines than jan did. larry and henry sold the same amount of magazines. how many magazines did jan sell?
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16 magazines jan sold

The magazines sold by Jan is 8

Solution:

Let us denote Larry by l, Jan by j and Henry by h.

We are given that Larry sold twice as many magazines as Jan.

So we can formulate an equation as follows;

l =2j  --eq1

We also know that Henry sold 8 more magazines than Jan did.

Therefore it can be written as;

h=8+j      --eq2

We have also been given that Larry and Henry sold the same amount of magazines.

This can be written as follows;

h = l  --eq3

we can rewrite eq1 in term of l

-- eqn 4

By substituting eq4 in eq2 we get;

2h = 16 + l   --eq5

From eq3 we know that h = l  

Therefore by substituting h for l we can rewrite eq5 as;

2l = 16+l

l = 16

This implies Larry sold 16 magazines.

But we know that Larry sold twice as many magazines as Jan, therefore  

j = 8

Hence Jan sold 8 magazines.