Taryn Moore

Polya Problem Solving

Problem: Suppose that each daughter in your family has the same number of brothers
as 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?

Step 1: The problem is asking to figure out how many sons and daughters are in the
family. The daughters in the family have the same number of brothers. Each son in the
family has double the amount of sisters as he has brothers.

Step 2: Given the information I know that the amount of daughters has to be even
considering it is doubled. I am going to use guess and check to find a solution. I am
going to use guess and check to create a table. I know that the amount of sons has to be
odd because the sons shouldn’t count themselves when looking into double the amount
of daughters.

Step 3: I know that the amount of daughters needs to be even and sons needs to be
odd. When doubling the amount of daughters, the sons don’t count themselves. I am
going to calculate for the odd numbers just to make sure my theory is correct.

Possible amounts of daughters Possible amounts of sons

1 0 (can’t get a whole number to double 1)

2 1 (doesn’t work because would have to count themselves to get double)

3 1.5 (not possible)

4 3

There are 4 daughters and 3 sons. The son will be able to count themselves and then
double the amount of who’s left equalling in the amount of sons.

Step 4: Looking back I could have easily created some form of algebraic way to
calculate the answer. Let d=daughters and s=son.
d-1=s or 2(s-1)=d
Since I knew that the amount of daughters has to be even and the amount of sons has
to be odd, creating this simple algebra would have been easier to do in the long run.