On Monday, biologists tagged 150 sunfish from a lake. On friday the biologists counted 12 tagged fish out of a sample of 400 sunfish from the same lake.

Question

anonymous · Answer

Ok, and then what?

anonymous · Answer

wait i need help with this one.. in a recent country election, 16,400 registered voters voted, which was a 32% voter turnout. Write and equation and solve to fin out how many registered voters there are in the country.

anonymous · Answer

Assuming you mean "county" and not "country" otherwise that's a small country. :-p
32% = the 16,400 out of the total amount that you are looking for.

anonymous · Answer

You can express 32% as 0.32 (if you like that sort of thing) or as 32/100.

anonymous · Answer

oops thats what i meant..thanks for the help!

anonymous · Answer

How do i find out the total though?

anonymous · Answer

Do you know how to write the equation now?

anonymous · Answer

"16,400 registered voters voted, which was a 32% voter turnout" translates to: 16400/total = 32%

anonymous · Answer

So you would multiply 16400 and 32%?

anonymous · Answer

No, because they are on opposite sides of the equals sign, so you can't do that.
First, it's best to express 32% as what it means, 32 out of 100, or 32/100. Some people prefer the decimal, 0.32, and that works better sometimes, but not here.

anonymous · Answer

In pure algebraic form, it looks like this:
$$\frac{16400}{T}=\frac{32}{100}$$

anonymous · Answer

i did that and it became 51250. So then what would you do?

anonymous · Answer

Uh.. not much else; that answers the question.

anonymous · Answer

Following proper word problem etiquette, I would answer the question in the way it was asked using complete sentences, and then probably go get a snack, because I'm hungry.

anonymous · Answer

so the proportions are the equations?

anonymous · Answer

Any time there's an equals sign, it's an equation. A proportion is one fraction set equal to another fraction. That is a statement of equality, so that's an equation to solve.

anonymous · Answer

|dw:1347068969928:dw| the rectangle has an area of 60 square feet. write and solve an equation to find the value of x. How do you do this one? Im not very good..and you're helping me get it better.