Math Problem of the Week - Algebra and Up - May 15, 2022 to May 21, 2022

Algebra and Up: 

Question: Mr. Wilson's statistics class is hanging posters around the classroom that feature different graphs. There are twice as many dot plots as there are histograms. There are four more dot plots than pie chart posters. There are three more box-and-whisker plots than dot plots. Mr. Wilson also has a poster of a kitten in his classroom. Altogether, there are 28 posters. How many of each type of poster are there?

Answer: 8 dot plots, 4 histograms, 4 pie charges, 11 box-and-whisker plots

Solution: Let’s define d as the number of dot plot posters. The number of histograms is ¹/₂d, the number of pie charts is d – 4, the number of box-and-whisker plots is d + 3, and the number of kittens is 1. We can turn all of that into an equation: d + (¹/₂d) + (d – 4) + (d + 3) + 1 = 3¹/₂d = 28. From there, we can solve for d, which is 8. Once we know that, we can evaluate the rest of the poster counts.