To solve the problem about Suri and her cousin's age, we can represent the cousin's age with a variable. Let's denote the cousin's age as c. According to the information provided:
- Suri's age is 17 years.
- Suri's age is 4 less than 3 times her cousin's age.
Based on this, we can set up the following equation:
17 = 3c - 4
This equation states that Suri's age (17) is equal to 3 times her cousin's age (3c) minus 4.
Now, to solve for c, we can perform the following steps:
- Add 4 to both sides:
17 + 4 = 3c
This results in:21 = 3c
- Divide both sides by 3:
c = 21 / 3
This simplifies to:c = 7
Therefore, Suri's cousin is 7 years old.
The method we used here was algebraic manipulation to isolate the variable c.