Ok, so we have a party and play a game where the boys and girls have to form groups of the same number. Every group has to be the same and we want as few groups as possible. The boys form three groups and the girls form four groups. Each group has "x" number of children. 3:4 means 7 groups of "x" or 7x.
Now we take six of the boys away from one of the groups.
If a whole group of boys was now gone, there'd be a ratio of 2 groups of boys to 4 groups of girls. Playing by the rules, the two groups of boys could join together, and the girls would do the same. 1:2.
Only it isn't that simple, as we've been left with some boys left in the third group. So, we play the grouping game again to get the groups to all have the same number of children in them. This time we have to rearrange everyone into smaller groups. We now have 5 groups of boys and 8 of girls. 5:8. Each group has "y" children in it. We have 13 groups of "y". 13y.
So, what do we know so far?
7 groups of "x" minus 6 children is 13 groups of "y". This gives us our first equation.
7x - 6 = 13y
Now, the number of girls hasn't changed, so we know that:
4x = 8y
Or
x = 2y
We can put that into our first equation.
14y - 6 = 13y
Or
14y - 13y = 6
So
y = 6
We know there are 8y girls, so we do the last sum and get 8 * 6 = 48 girls!