Question

Justin owns a small business selling used books. He knows that in the last week 76 customers paid cash, 4 customers used a debit card, and 42 customers used a credit card. If next week, he is expecting 200 customers, about how many would you expect to pay with cash? Round your answer to the nearest whole number.

Answer 1

You'd expect 125 customers to pay with cash.

Explanation:

This is ratio problem. Once you find the ratio the cash-payers, debit-payers, and credit-payers have with each other, then you'll be able to use the same ratio with the 200 new customers, and find your numbers.

Total

In order to find the ratio of each part we need to find how it relates to the whole. The "whole" in this problem is the total number of customers.

76 + 4 + 42 = 122

122 is the total number of customers.

Ratio of each

Now we need to find how each demographic of payer relates to the whole.

76 out of 122 paid with cash. We can represent this as
`(76)/(122)` =
`(38)/(61)` = 0.622950819672 = 0.623

4 out of 122 paid with a debit card. We can represent this as
`(4)/(122) = (2)/(61)` = 0.0327868852459 = 0.033

42 out of 122 paid with a credit card. We can represent this as
`(42)/(122) = (21)/(61)` = 0.344262295082 = 0.344

200 New customers

Now we just have to find the proper ratios of 200

62.3% paid with cash. 0.623 of 200 is (multiply together) 124.6

3.3% paid with a debit card. 0.033 of 200 is (multiply) 6.6

34.4% paid with a credit card. 0.344 of 200 is (multiply) 68.8

124.6 + 6.6 + 68.8 does equal 200

Round answer to nearest whole number

124.6 cash payers rounds to 125

6.6 debit payers rounds to 7

68.8 credit payers rounds to 69

The question in the problem is "how many would you expect to pay with cash?" We just found that answer, thus you're question is answered.

You'd expect 125 customers to pay with cash.

Hope this helps...

Chow!