oops! No flower

[sanju09]

Three churches are situated in a row along water of an enchanted pool. A priest, with some flowers in his basket, swims down to the first church in the row. There he finds the number of flowers that he had in his basket, got doubled by some miracle. So, he offers a certain number of flowers for Jesus sake, and then he swims down to the second church. He finds same miracle there too; so he offers the same number of flowers as he did in the first church, and then he swims down to the third church, same miracle, same offerings, and oops! No flower is left in the basket!

1.What is the minimum possible non zero number of flowers that the priest would have started with?

2.What is the minimum possible non zero number of flowers that the priest would have offered at each church?

[praxis]

at the first church he has N flowers
-- which is doubled to 2N
-- from which he offers P, leaving 2N-P
repeat at the second church,
-- double: 2( 2N-P)
-- offer P: 2( 2N-P) - P
repeat at third church,
-- double: 2( 2( 2N-P ) - P)
-- offer P: 2( 2( 2N-P ) - P) - P
but he has none left! so,

2( 2( 2N-P ) - P) - P = 8N - 7P = 0

What is the smallest possible positive non-zero number satisfying this relation? Since 7 and 8 are mutually prime, we can use the smallest multiple of both, 56. So N=7 and P=8.

Want some more practice algebra questions? Try these:
https://www.testsandtutors.com/course/qu ... anslations

[Uri]

backsolving this problem, we can easily find the answer.
no of flowers the priest started with is 7 and at each church he offered 8 flowers.
sanju, does this type of problem appear in GMAT?

[sanju09]

backsolving this problem, we can easily find the answer.
no of flowers the priest started with is 7 and at each church he offered 8 flowers.
sanju, does this type of problem appear in GMAT?

No, not in this form though. But it is basic Algebra only, we can attempt it.