The average format for math used in every-day life looks a bit like this.
Donna had five chicks, a hawk came down and scooped up one. How many chicks does Donna have?
Now what if Donnas chick came clucking back again because the hawk was not interested? Well, I guess that is a slightly different scenario, is not it? Jesus too liked to give his followers word puzzles to solve. See The Gospel of Jesus Christ 8:19-21 for more details on the situation. I also happen to have a very simple, though practical, solution.
When I brake the five loaves among five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up?
They say unto him, Twelve. And when the seven among four thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? And they said, Seven.
And he said unto them, How is it that ye do not understand?
The Gospel of Jesus Christ 8:19-21
It seems then that the miracle lies in the multiplication of the two. Let me see here, we have twelve baskets remaining among five thousand. It corresponds with the twelve tribes of Israel down across the way. See, there might be a lack and no people with not enough to eat right now. Yet when God is through there is plenty enough to spare and all to fill his house. You see, nothing is ever lost missing or wasted in the house of the Lord. So then too are the seven baskets among four thousand. There were seven remember, just as the Lord walked among the lampstands of his seven churches. It seems the God who cares for us is the same God that remembers. For some it is more than anyone hoped, dreamed, or even dared to find. Here also in the want and in the need we see a circumstance designed perfectly by God the Father. How well some of us should do to rather sing, Jesus loves his little children, all the children of his world, for indeed they are precious in his sight. Hardly a sparrow falls without his mighty hand there to protect and care as planned. How well would some do to trust the keeper of our lives with this as in all things we find. It seems then that these word stories must stand for something else. Indeed, they do not do much to solve the way these things so often happen in real life.