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New Application Problems from the Classroom

Here are few more problems that I came up with during today’s class:

1.  Clyde owed 8 different people $4 each for some doughnuts that he bought to eat on his birthday. Then when he wasn’t looking, Hellman’s stole $4 from Clyde’s wallet.  In order to reclaim his debt, Clyde needed to split up his total losses over a period of nine months.  How much debt will he recover over each of the nine months?

2.  Clyde went to the store and he bought seven nuclear weapons, but he doesn’t know the price of them yet.  He had to return four of the weapons because they were defective.  Then Clyde had to pay $9 in order to bribe a government official into letting him keep the weapons.  Finally, when buying the weapons, Clyde had a $4 off coupon.  How much did Clyde pay since he did not yet know the price per weapon?

3.  The hypotenuse of a right triangle is the median of {0.52, 0.69, 0.71, 0.34, 0.54} and one of the legs is the median of {0.26, 0.12, 0.35, 0.43, 0.28}.  Find the length of the missing side.

4.  The length of a boat is the mean of {11, 32, 21, 74, 32, 25, 29} ft.  Convert the length of the boat to meters.

5.  The diameter of a doughnut is the average of {3.6, 7.4, 3.9, 6.2, 7.6} cm.  Convert the diameter to millimeters.
By Jon Oaks

College Math Instructor. Tech Enthusiast. Visionary. Creative Genius. But above all, I enjoy what I do. That is why I am a teacher. Because I like to teach.

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