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Example Question #51 : Statistics & Probability
A middle school teacher conducted a survey of the grade class and found that students were athletes and of those students drink soda. There were students that were not athletes, but drank soda. Last, they found that students were neither athletes nor drank soda. Given this information, how many students don't drink soda?
To help answer this question, we can construct a two-way table and fill in our known quantities from the question.
The columns of the table will represent the students who are athletes or are not athletes and the rows will contain the students who drink soda or do not drink soda. The first bit of information that we were given from the question was that students were athletes; therefore, needs to go in the "athlete" column as the row total. Next, we were told that of those students, drinks soda; therefore, we need to put in the "athlete" column and in the "drinks soda" row. Then, we were told that students were not athletes, but drink soda, so we need to put in the "not an athlete" column and the "drinks soda" row. Finally, we were told that students are not athletes or soda drinkers, so needs to go in the "not an athlete" column and "doesn't drink soda" row. If done correctly, you should create a table similar to the following:
Our question asked how many students don't drink soda. We add up the numbers in the "doesn't drink soda" row to get the total, but first we need to fill in a gap in our table, students who were athletes, but don't drink soda. We can take the total number of students who are athletes, , and subtract the number of students who drink soda,
This means that students who are athletes, don't drink soda.
Now, we add up the numbers in the "doesn't drink soda" row to get the total:
This means that students don't drink soda.
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