Judging by the question at hand I identified that both triangles are congruent, completely identical.
I then next noticed that M<I and M<P are congruent angles.
So the equation you should have formed should be
3x+4=72-x
The next step is to simplify the problem by first subtracting 4 from each side, to isolate the x, and then adding x to each side to isolate 68. The new equation should be 4x=68
Next just divide both sides by 4, and your solution should be x=17