Question

Twenty-five percent of the students at Marcus Garvey Middle School bring their lunches from home. 225 students do not bring their lunch. Draw and label a diagram to show the number and percent of each group of students. Hint: You can check to make sure your answers make sense by checking that 225/(total students)=25. What percent of students don't bring their lunches? How many students attend the school?

Answer 1

75% of students don't bring their lunches from home. The total number of students that attend the school is 300 students.

Solving word problems involving algebra

Word problems involving algebraic equation requires careful interpretation of the problem into integers, arithmetic operations, and their constant.

From the given question:

We can assume that the total number of students at Marcus Garvey Middle School is M.

If 25% i.e. 0.25 students bring lunches from home and 225 students do not bring lunches from home. We can have a mathematical representation as:

0.25M + 225 = M

Collect like terms

M - 0.25M = 225

0.75 M = 225

M = 225/0.75

M = 300

The total number of students in the school is 300 students.

Therefore, we can conclude that if 25% of students bring their lunches from home, Then: 300 × 0.25 = 75 students bring their lunches from home and 300 - 75 students = 225 students do not bring their lunches from home.