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Polya Problem

The problem states that in a family, each daughter has the same number of brothers as sisters and each son has twice as many sisters as brothers. The solver tries different combinations of sons and daughters to find one that satisfies both conditions. They determine that a family with 4 daughters and 3 sons works, as each daughter has 1 brother (the same as her 1 sister), and each son has 2 sisters (twice his 1 brother).

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203 views2 pages

Polya Problem

The problem states that in a family, each daughter has the same number of brothers as sisters and each son has twice as many sisters as brothers. The solver tries different combinations of sons and daughters to find one that satisfies both conditions. They determine that a family with 4 daughters and 3 sons works, as each daughter has 1 brother (the same as her 1 sister), and each son has 2 sisters (twice his 1 brother).

Uploaded by

api-458215592
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Polya Problem

Suppose that each daughter in your family has the same number of brothers as she has
sisters, and each son in your family has twice as many sisters as he has brothers. How many
sons and daughters are in the family?

Understand the Problem:


There is going to be more girls than there is boys. Each daughter has the same number of
brothers that she has sisters, that would be excluding herself. Each son has two times as many
sisters as he has brothers, also excluding himself. So how many sons and daughters are in the
family?
Need to find:
● How many sons
● How many daughters

Devise a Plan:
I will use visuals to help me see if what I’ve tried works, visuals will help me work through my
thinking with this problem.

Carry Out the Plan:

First I am going to start out with two daughters to see if that would be possible. If each daughter
has the same number of brothers that she has sisters, then there should be one brother added.

Each son is supposed to have twice as many sisters as he has brothers, so having two
daughters and one son would not be a valid option. The son doesn’t have any brothers and
0x2=0. There and more than zero sister’s in this scenario. So lets try the problem with three
daughters instead of two.
With there are three daughters, there needs to be two sons. That way every daughter has the
same amount of brothers that she has sisters.

Again, there needs to be twice as many sisters as there is brothers. In this scenario there is only
one brother and 1x2= 2. There are more than two sisters in this scenario so again, this is not a
valid option. Now I will try it with 4 sisters and three brothers.

In this scenario each daughter has the same amount of sisters as she has brothers. Each son
has two brothers, double that number (2x2) and the answer will be four. So there are 4
daughters and 3 sons in the family.

Look Back:
I think that the strategy that I used in this scenario was pretty effective. I was able to get to the
solution pretty quickly, and being able to visually see the problem helped me understand it. I do
think that there is another approach that I could have used. I could have written an equation and
solved it that way. I would have made girls X and boys Y. We know there will be one less boy
than there is girl so the first equations would be X-1=Y. In order to find the solution for girls we
would need to double our first equation. That would give us the equation 2(Y-2)=X.

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