Over the last three evenings, Latoya received a total of 79 phone calls at the call center. The first evening, she received 6 fewer calls than the third evening. The second evening, she received 3 times as many calls as the third evening. How many phone calls did she receive each evening?

We need to represent the numbers of calls symbolically:

Third evening: x calls

First eve: x-6 calls

Second evening: 3x calls

Find x. Add up these three numbers x, x-6 and 3x and equate your sum to 79:

x+x-6+3x = 79. Then 5x=79+6, or 5x = 85. Thus, x = 17.

17 calls on the 3rd night,

17-6 calls on the 1st night, and

3 (17) = 51 calls on the 2nd night.

Check! Add together 17, 11 and 51. Do these add up to 79? Yes.

The first evening she received 15.2 calls. The second night she received 42.6. The third evening she received 21.2