There are several peaches on a plate. Mary took c peaches from the plate, Andrew took the remaining y peaches. How many peaches were on the plate?

You can use algebra to write an expression that would represent the number of peaches that were on the plate to start.

If each person took a part of the number of peters, you can put those parts back together with an addition problem

c + y would represent how many peaches there were to start.