To solve the problem, omit all extra details. To do this, read the question and identify all numbers that you need for solving. All numbers that are not involved in solving are extra ones.

There are two pencils and a pen on the table. The green pencil is 5 inches long, the red pencil is 2 inches longer than the green one, and the blue pen is 6 inches long.

What is the length of the red pencil?

We have highlighted the significant data and a question with red color.

Other information we will cut out.

The green pencil is 5 inches long, and the red pencil is 2 inches longer than the green one. What is the length of the red pencil?

Solve this task by adding up the known numbers left after omitting extra details.

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A condition and a question are the main two components of each problem. To omit all extra details, we need to consider each condition carefully, as we need only the information that we can use for solving.

Michael rode his red bike 2 miles from the grocery store. It took him 12 minutes. He stopped only once for 5 minutes. There is only 1 mile left to his house. How many miles is home from the store?

We have a question. We need to find out the number of miles from the store to the house. What information do we need for this? We will need numbers that denote distance: 2 and 1. Number two shows how many miles the boy has already done, and number one denotes the distance left to drive. We will use only these numbers for the solution.

We don't need to pay attention to how much time Michael spent on the way and how many minutes it took him to stop. We will omit these details. Also, we do not need information that it was a grocery store, not some other one. The color of the bike also doesn't matter. Let's write the text of the problem again. 

Michael rode his bike 2 miles from the store. There is only 1 mile left to his house. How many miles are from the store to home?

The task has become much shorter. How to solve it, you guess yourself. For this, you had many lessons on how to add numbers. And, yes, it was a hint - you need to add the numbers to find the total distance.

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