help i am in need of help

You can start by writing equations with the given information
1) You know that together, Mindy and Troy ate 9, so you can write
M+T=9
2) Then, it says that Mindy ate 3, so M=3
3) Troy ate 1/4 of the total cake, however we don't know what the amount of the total cake is, so we can represent it as x, T=1/4x
4) Plug in these equations into the first equation, 3+1/4x=9
5) Solve for X, Subtract 3 from both sides to get 1/4x=6
6) Divide 1/4 on both sides, x=(6÷1/4)
x=24
Hope this helped :)
The equation you should first write, where m is the number of pieces Mindy ate, t is the number of pieces Troy ate, and 9 represents the number of pieces they ate together, would be:
m + t = 9
Next, you can plug in the other information you were given. Mindy ate three pieces, so plug in 3 for m. Troy ate 1/4 of the entire cake, so plug in 1/4c for t:
3 + 1/4c = 9
^That is an equation you could use from just plugging in the information from the problem. To solve, subtract 3 from each side to isolate the variable:
1/4c = 6
Finally, divide each side by 1/4. When you need to divide by a fraction, you can always multiply by its reciprocal to get the same results. That means dividing each side by 1/4 is the same as multiplying each side by 4:
c = 6 * 4
c = 24
There were 24 total pieces of cake.