Word Problem Wednesday: Alligators Are Scary, Math Is Not

May 15, 2019 | Elk Grove West

By Mathnasium | Added May 15, 2019

Practice elementary school math skills such as estimation, division, multiplication, addition and subtraction to solve this word problem.

Have you ever seen a white alligator? No, not the ghost of an alligator, an actual white alligator! We aren’t telling you a tall-tale, white alligators do exist. We promise we don’t have any of these rare creatures hanging out in our math learning centers looking for tutoring in math, but we do think they’re pretty fascinating and we’ve made them the subject of this week’s word problem challenge!

So put on your thinking caps and dust off your elementary school math skills such as estimation, division, multiplication, addition and subtraction, and try to solve the following word problem. Take your time and think it over — we know you can do it! When you’re ready, look below to check your solution against ours.

See ya later, alligator!

Question: One out of every 250,000 alligators is born white. If there are an estimated 1,750,000 alligators in the state of Florida, how many of them are likely to be white?



Solution: If there is one white alligator per group of 250,000 alligators, then we need to find how many groups of 250,000 alligators there are in Florida. Because 1,750,000 alligators divided into groups of 250,000 makes 7 groups, there are an estimated 7 white alligators in Florida.

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