Question

Question 3 of 30

Paul buys fruit to make smoothies. He buys 3.78 pounds of apples, 2.12 pounds of peaches, and 4.45 pounds of oranges. Paul rounds each weight to the nearest tenth of a pound. About how many pounds of fruit did Paul buy?

(A) 10.5 pounds
(B) 10.2 pounds
(C) 10.4 pounds
(D) 10.0 pounds
30 points

Answer 1

(C) 10.4 lb

Explanation:

If Paul added each weight before adding, as you state, he got:

Apples 3.78 ⟶ 3.8

Peaches 2.12 ⟶ 2.1

Oranges 4.45 ⟶ 4.4

Total 10.3 lb

If he did it this way, he did it incorrectly, and his answer isn't in the list of options, anyway. That's because his method introduces round-off errors.

The correct way is to add the numbers as given, and then round off at the end.

Apples 3.78

Peaches 2.12

Oranges 4.45

Total 10.35 ⟶ 10.4 lb

Note: When you drop a 5 followed by nothing, you round off to the nearest even number.