Question

CRITICAL THINKING: A newspaper article reports the results of an election between 2 candidates. The article says that Smith received 60% of the voted and that Murphy received 1/3 of the votes. A reader writes in to complain that the article cannot be accurate. What reason might the reader have to say to this?

Answer 1

1/3 is equal to about 33%. 60%+33%=93%. There should be 100%.

Answer 2

The reason why the article cannot be accurate is because there's only 2 candidates, that is, the 100% of all votes must be the sum of both candidate's both, and if we sum, we find that the percentages given don't represent the total 100%:

`(60\%)/(100\%)+(1)/(3)=(3)/(5)+(1)/(3)=(9+5)/(15)=(14)/(15)`

As you can see, the sum of both ratios don't result in 1, which means 100%. If we divide we have:

`(14)/(15) \approx 0.93 \ or \ 93\%`

According to the article, both candidates only represent 93%, which is wrong, because they must represent 100%, because there's no other candidate.