Question

Approximately 8 out of every 25 families in the United States own dogs. If you asked 90 families, about how many of them would you expect to own dogs?

Answer 1

28.8

Explanation

8/25 families own dogs.

8/25 * 90 = 720/25 = 28.8

What do you do with the 0.8? I would say that since this is a statistic, you leave it for 2 reasons.

1. The sample, though small, is not trivial and it reflects a trend.
2. The sample is an indicator of a much much larger population.

I know it is impossible to have 0.8 families, but it will have more significance as the sample approaches the general population. According to the census taken in 2017, there are 126.22 million households in the United states. Written in expanded form, that would be 126,220,000 families.

If you take that as your base and use 8/25 as the number with dogs, you come to 8/25 * 126,220,000 = 1009760000/25 = 40390400

The point I'm trying to make is that the 0.8 we were concerned about, no longer exists.