Monday, September 25, 2006

Question 3 on page 1 of the Pretest sheet

Ok, it's my job to do the heading up above so here are the questions:

3. Find the Value of x in the data.
10, 12, 6, 6, 14, x, 8, 10, 12, 12, 8, 14
A) If the mean is 10.

B) If the mode is 12.
C) If the median is 11.
Is there more than one possible answer for each question?

I'll start with a. Here are the numbers I got.

6, 6, 8, 8, (this is the number that replaces the x) 8, 10, 10, 12, 12, 12, 14, 14.

If you all them all up, you get 120. The we divide it by 12 to get the mean of 10. So it looks like this:

120
---- = 10
2
Let's move on now to 1b. If the mode is 12, the number that has to show up is 12. Here's one way of doing it.

6, 6, 8, 8, 10, 10,(this is the number that replaces the x) 12, 12, 12, 12, 14, 14.

When you match them all up, the middle number should be 12. If you want a short-cut, here's the faster answer. As long as the number has equal or greater value, it is considered correct.

Yay! I'm almost done. Here's the final answer, well almost, ok 2nd last answer. This is the answer to question 1c.

For me, I just repeated the same numbers as I got above. I'll put them down again to help.

6, 6, 8, 8, 10, 10, 12, 12, 12, 12, 14, 14.

When you match them up, you should get 2 middle numbers, 10 and 12. When you add them up, your sum should be 22. You then divide 22 by 11 to get your median 11. I'll do this in math form for you people who dont get a word I typed down. It should look like this.

10+11= 22

22
--- = 11
2

Last question. It says this: Is there more than one possible answer for each question?

The answer is yes, there can be more then 1 possible answer for each question. How? Let's see. In the math world 1 simple word problem can have at least a hundred different ways of answering it. But most of us don't take the time to search, we just do the question the way we were taught. If we took more time, we would begin to see many different ways of doing a question and geting a different answer or answers. Well, I've said enough. Ok. I'm done this thing.

Till next time:
Meldee

2 comments:

michelle 8-16 said...

Meldee, you didn't explain the answer for A. Well, the answer for A is 8. Here is how I got it:

120(sum of data)
--- =10
12(# pieces of data)

120-112(total of 11 numbers)=8(x)

Mr. H said...

Thanks for the clarification Michelle.

Harbeck

Good Job Melody.