Dan bought 7 new baseball trading cards to add to his collection. The next day his dog ate half of h

Dan bought 7 new baseball trading cards to add to his collection. The next day his dog ate half of his collection. There are now only 26 cards left. How many cards did Dan start with?

Let the starting amount of cards be s. We're given:

• Dan bought 7 new cards: s + 7
• The dog ate half of his collection. This means he's left with half, or (s + 7)/2
• Now, he's got 26 cards left. So we set up the following equation:

(s + 7)/2 = 26

Cross multiply:
s + 7 = 26 * 2
s + 7 = 52

To solve for s, we plug this equation into our search engine and we get:
s = 45