Word Problem Wednesday: Estimating, Rounding, Multiplication ... Oh My!

Are you a collector? From baseball cards to stamps, coins to comic books, just about everyone has something they like to collect and trade. In this week’s word problem challenge, Kaylee likes to collect trading cards. Practice your elementary school and money math skills such as estimating, rounding, multiplication, and division by helping Kaylee figure out how many packs of trading cards she can buy with $20.

Question: Packs of trading cards cost $3.50. What is the greatest number of packs of trading cards that Kaylee can buy with a $20.00 bill?

Ready for the solution? Check it out below...

Solution: First, let’s estimate how many packs of cards Kaylee can buy by rounding; $3.50 rounds up to $4.00, and $4.00 goes into $20.00 five times. Let’s try it with the actual value of a pack of cards; $3.50 × 5 = $17.50. That means that if Kaylee buys 5 packs, she’ll have $2.50 left, which isn’t enough to buy another pack of cards. So, Kaylee can buy 5 packs of cards at most.

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(Image above by Jinx! on Flickr.)