Summarize a word problem using a table
Last updated: 13 Oct 2008
Yet again the question contains a great deal of information.
We can put all the information into a table to make the question simpler to solve.
'At a football game 50% of the seats are sold to club-members who pay $11 each and 10% are sold to children who pay $5 each. All the remaining tickets are sold to non-members at $15 each. What proportion of the total gate receipts for the game is contributed by non-members?'
In the question we have three different types of tickets, 'club-members', 'children' and 'non-members' and three different types of information are given or asked for, '% of tickets sold', 'price of ticket' and '% of total income'.
Therefore we would sketch a 3x3 table.
| % tickets sold | price | % total income | |
|---|---|---|---|
| club-members | |||
| children | |||
| non-members |
And begin to fill in the information.
'At a football game 50% of the seats are sold to club-members who pay $11 each and 10% are sold to children who pay $5 each.'
| % tickets sold | price | % total income | |
|---|---|---|---|
| club-members | 50% | $11 | |
| children | 10% | $5 | |
| non-members |
'All the remaining tickets are sold to non-members at $15 each. What proportion of the total gate receipts for the game is contributed by non-members?''
| % tickets sold | price | % total income | |
|---|---|---|---|
| club-members | 50% | $11 | |
| children | 10% | $5 | |
| non-members | $15 | ? |
Where '?' represents what we need to find to answer the question.
We have the summary now let's answer the question.
