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Question 3: A bag contains a total of 300 purple and yellow beads.
Without looking, a student chooses a bead, records the color and places
it back in the bag. The student records 9 purple beads and 16 yellow
beads. What is the best prediction of the total number of yellow beads in
the bag? *

Best answer that i found on yahoo ok   set :   x= length of 2nd piece in cm  x- 3= length of 1st piece in cm  x-4= length of 3rd piece in cm  then since you know they all came from the 20 cm ribbon you add them together and set them equal to 20x+ x-3 +x-4 = 20  3x - 7= 20  3x= 27  x= 9  the shortest piece is the third piece which is x- 4  x-4  9-4 = 5  the length of the smallest piece is 5 cm.  the other lengths are  9 cm  6 cm