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Here's a boring, unshmoopy question you'll find on the exam...
The chart below shows the percentages of the different types of homes in Shmoopville.
If there are 800 homes in the town, how many of them are apartments or condominiums?
And here are the potential answers: So… this question is a “How To Read A
Pie Chart" test --with a twist.
It takes the percentages we see on the chart...
...and makes us multiply them against a constant or base.
In this case, the question GIVES us that 100% of the pie is 800.
That is, we'd get 800 if we added up all the homes in Shmoopville -- next door neighbor
to Whoville... and down the street from Farmville. So if 800 homes is 100% of the pie, then,
say... 50% is 400 homes and 25% is 200 homes.
So when they ask us for "apartments or condominiums" we are just looking for a summation of the
number of apartments PLUS the number of condominiums.
The OR there is big fat signal to ADD our elements.
So in this case, we don't care how many apartments there are or how many condos there are -- we
just care about the TOTAL of both of them. So to simplify the problem, we can just add
the percentages, which is 20% and 25% to total 45%.
And we take that 45% and multiply it by 800 to get the NUMBER of homes.
So here we go: 800 times 45 is zero zero 40, then slip one
to the left and we get zero zero 2 and 3... and the total is 360.
Or answer B. And all the Shmoops down in Shmoopville rejoiced.