How do i know when to divide multiply add or subtract in a math word problem

Explain how you can use the associative property to evaluate (7x50)x4.

Hector and alex traded video games. alex gave hector one fourth of his video games in exchange for 6 video games. then he sold 3 video games and gave 2 video games to his brother. alex ended up with 16 video games. how many video games did alex have when he started?

Raj encoded a secret phrase using matrix multiplication. using a = 1, b = 2, c = 3, and so on, he multiplied the clear text code for each letter by the matrix to get a matrix that represents the encoded text. the matrix representing the encoded text is . what is the secret phrase? determine the location of spaces after you decode the text. yummy is the corn the tomato is red the corn is yummy red is the tomato