ShmoopTube

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Here's a boring, unshmoopy question you'll find on the exam...

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The chart below shows the percentages of the different types of homes in Shmoopville.

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If there are 800 homes in the town, how many of them are apartments or condominiums?

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And here are the potential answers:

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So... this question is a "How To Read A Pie Chart" test --with a twist.

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It takes the percentages we see on the chart...

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...and makes us multiply them against a constant or base.

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In this case, the question GIVES us that 100% of the pie is 800.

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That is, we'd get 800 if we added up all the homes in Shmoopville --

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So if 800 homes is 100% of the pie, then,

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say... 50% is 400 homes and 25% is 200 homes.

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So when they ask us for "apartments or condominiums" we are just looking for a summation

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of the number of apartments PLUS the number of condominiums.

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The OR there is big fat signal to ADD our elements.

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So in this case, we don't care how many apartments there are or how many condos there are --

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we just care about the TOTAL of both of them.

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So to simplify the problem, we can just add the percentages, which is 20% and 25% to total 45%.

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And we take that 45% and multiply it by 800 to get the NUMBER of homes.

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So here we go: 800 times 45 is zero zero 40, then slip one

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to the left and we get zero zero 2 and 3... and the total is 360.

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Or answer B. And all the Shmoops down in Shmoopville rejoiced.

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