The sum of three consecutive odd numbers is 159.

What is the smallest of the three numbers?

Since we don't know where to start, we can always give that a variable which in this case, it's X. Since we are finding the sum of three consecutive odd numbers, we will be skipping numbers so we can add 2 each time. Now, let's set up an equation.

X + X + 2 + X + 4 = 1593x + 6 = 159 - 6 - 6 ← subtract 6 on both sides 3x = 153 : 3 : 3 ← divide both sides by 3 X = 51 X + 2 = 53 X + 4 = 55

Therefore, the smallest of our three consecutive integers is 51.