Joe has some baseball cards, and his brother has 1/3 as many as Joe. Joe has 36 more than his brother. How many does Joe have?
+60 "Joe has some baseball cards, and his brother has 1/3 as many as Joe. Joe has 36 more than his brother."
We know that Joe's brother has 1/3 as many as Joe. In the problem, they tell us Joe has 36 more than his brother.
This tells us that 2/3 of Joe's baseball cards are 36.
To figure out what 1/3 of his total is we just have to divide 36 by 2 (because 36 is 2/3 of the total).
36 divided by 2 is 18
18 is 1/3 of the total. We just need to multiply 18 by 3 to get the answer!
18 times 3 is 54
Joe has 54 baseball cards. 
Hope this helped! 
+37146 b = 1/3 j
j = b + 36 these are given sub first into second equation
j = 1/3j + 36
2/3 j = 36
j = 54 cards
