Tommy gives baseball cards to four of his friends. he gives kiana 3 cards less than he gives gary.
he gives monty 7 cards more than he gives kiana. he gives willa twice as many as he gives
monty. how many cards does tommy give to each friend if he gives out a total of 74 cards?

We need to write system of equations for this problem. Reading text we write 1 equation by 1.
first lets name our variables
x - Kiana cards
y - Gary cards
z - Monty cards
m - Willa cards

x = y-3         which we can write as y = x+3
z = x + 7
m = 2z
x + y + z + m = 74

I think easiest way to solve this is to express all variables in last equation and solve for x.
x + x+3 + x + 7+ 2x + 14= 74
5x = 50
x = 10
now we just calculate cards given to each friend

y = 13
z = 17
m = 34