Carly is making cupcakes and brownies for her art class. She makes 2 less than three times as many brownies as cupcakes. If Carly's class has five people and each person gets two treats, how many cupcakes did Carly make?
First, figure out how many total treats Carly made for her class by multiplying the number of people in the class by the number of treats per person: 5 people * 2 treats/person = <<5*2=10>>10 treats
Next, express the number of brownies in terms of the number of cupcakes based on the problem information: b = 3c - 2, where b is the number of brownies and c is the number of cupcakes
We know that b + c = 10, the total number of treats, so now we can substitute in the expression for b from the last step: 3c - 2 + c = 10
Now we combine like terms to get 4c - 2 = 10
We add two to both sides of the equation to get 4c = 12
Finally, we divide both sides by 4 to get c = 3
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