ShmoopTube

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Here's a boring, unshmoopy question you'll find on the exam...

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Students in an Algebra 1 class took the following amount of time to finish a test.

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Yep, another "can you read a chart" question. Check this out:

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So the question asks... which of the following statements is true?

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And here they are:

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So... when a question asks us anything like "which of the following are true",

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it means we just have to roll up our sleeves and go one by one testing each little morsel

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of hot dog they give us to evaluate. Let's just start with A.

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It says, "more than half the students took between 15 and 45 minutes"

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So then we just go back to the pie chart thing and see what it has to say.

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Everything here is in percents, so to make things easier on ourselves, we can just think

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about it as a number of students rather than some fancy fraction.

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And in this case we can throw out answer A immediately because

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57% took 45 minutes to an hour...

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...that is, since over half DIDN'T fit in the 15 to 45 minute time window,

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there's no way that more than half COULD.

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We don't get brownie points for calculating that 10% took 15-30 minutes

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and 23% took 30-45 minutes for a total of 33%.

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So let's throw out A and move on as fast as we can.

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B is sorta the counter-side of A.

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It says LESS than half the students took 45 minutes to an hour to fnish...

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...but we just noted that this number was 57% ... already OVER half.

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So B is a quick easy toss out.

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Move on to C.

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C says: More than a quarter of the class took

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EITHER 15 to 30 minutes to finish, OR did not finish the test at all.

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So here, we've got a SUM. Meaning... we ADD both cases.

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That's what happens when we have a conditional phrase like "OR".

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As in... Hand me a condiment --

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either that half gallon jug of ketchup OR that gallon jug of mustard.

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So in the 15-30 minute group, we see that 10% of the students were captured here --

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and then in the Did Not Finish group, we have 10% as well.

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If we add them, we have a total of 20% of the students in those two groups.

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So C is in fact only 20%, which is LESS than a quarter or 25%.

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So C ain't cuttin' it for us either. Odds are very good D is the answer.

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D says that more than a quarter of the class took between 15 and 45 minutes to finish.

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Well, the 15-30 group was 10% - check.

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And the 30-45 group was 23% - check.

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ADD the two groups to get 33% and yeah -- woo hoo --

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33% is in fact greater than a quarter or 25%

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So the answer is, yes... we can read a pie chart. D.

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Time for a slice.

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