Michelle had 4 pairs of socks for $1.99 and Joe had 8 pairs of t-shirts for $5.99. Michelle now has 2 more pairs of socks than originally, and they want to know the total number of items after adding the additional pairs of socks. To solve this, they set up an equation relating the number of socks and t-shirts and solved to find the total is 16. In a separate problem, they found that 32% of 8 is 2.56 by setting up the percentage as a fraction over 100 and solving the equation.