Can you help me with this maths problem?

[MathsMagpie]

Or explain where to start?

I wonder if that is part of the maths question, if you see what I mean?

Ok, but why are you doing that and what is badly worded about the question?

I wasn’t one who said it was badly worded, I just saw it as a simple sum. So I’m wondering if that is part of the question, to make one figure out how to do it?

Frequency. How often did something happen. How many times were a 12th text sent.

40 pupils. So add up how many texts in total that they sent. We know they sent either 4,5,6,7 or 8 texts. Joe many texts were sent in total?
4 texts were sent by 2 circles and one bit, ie 9. 4 x 9 = 36

Add all the numbers together.

4 x 9 = 36
5 x 10 = 50
6 x 8 = 48
7 x 3 = 21
8 x 10 = 80

Total 235. 235 texts were sent total. How many times then were a 12th text sent. 235 / 12 = 19.58

Op hasn't come back yet to tell us whether that's the right answer. I have no idea. If it's the right answer! It was just a guess because all the other answers of eg 0 , which was my 1st thought, were wrong.

So, 235 texts in total, divided by 12 tells you what mathematical fact?

235 is the total number of texts sent.

To find the mean (average) you divide the total number of texts (235) by the total number of pupils (40).

That gives the mean as 5.875 texts, so on average the pupils sent 5.875 texts.

I don’t see why you’d divide by 12, except that’s a number the question asks about. 😀

Edit: cross-posted with the last couple of posts.

May, average isn't frequency though.

Either the answer is 0, because 0 pupils sent 12 texts, or there is something wrong with Dr Frost.

Exactly. I was trying to make sense of 235.

I think the general agreement on this thread is that there’s a fault in the question.

If this happens to someone doing a homework I’d set, my standard advice is to stop working on the question and ask when they were back in school.

Frequency rate.

That's not what the question is though, and that isn't a year 8 topic either. In fact, I haven't seen it in the specification as a stand alone topic, but it might be the sort of thing that comes up in an exam to assess whether learners can use formulae.

I'm invested in this now! We must have answers tomorrow OP!

We can’t try any different answers now, it’s been put in incorrectly too many times. Will update when we find out!

Would it be 11? 7 and 4 texts are the only ones to add up to 12 frequencies.

Just a warning that if this is Sparx or hearty then sometimes the answer is wrong - and then you can't move on....

19.58 pupils?
I think we can be sure that the number of pupils will be a whole number!

@MathsMagpie

Oh no, the suspense. Will kill me. I hate waiting. Beg you to update as soon as you find out op!

It's not frequency of pupil. It's frequency of texts.

No idea what the little circles are. And no idea what the numbers mean either.

But the value in the frequency column is the number of pupils (a whole circle = 4 pupils). No?

No frequency is not the number of pupils, it's the number of times the act was done, the frequency, it relates to how many texts were sent. How often, how regularly. How frequent. It's not the pupils that's the focus, it's the texts that we should be focusing on. How many texts were sent, how often, at what frequency were the texts sent.

I understand what frequency is, I just don't see how it relates to how the question is posed.
The values in the frequency column refer to the number of pupils.
The frequency column is not the number of texts.

Very odd / badly phrased question.

The questions are wrong, so there cannot be correct answers.

If they were trick questions, the answers would be 0, which is not the case, and in any serious homework, there wouldn't be two such questions.

I strongly recommend that the child's parents ask the teacher who set this homework.

Which website are these questions on? Schools should not be using such websites.

Yes. I am itching to know the sodding answer.

Always, kids don't send texts these days, it's Snapchat