Question

Sarah owns a small business selling clothing. She knows that in the last week 25 customers paid cash, 24 customers used a debit card, and 4 customers used a credit card.

If next week, she is expecting 500 customers, about how many would you expect to pay with a debit card? Round your answer to the nearest whole number.

Answer 1

See attached table.

Explanation:

We can convert the previous week's experience into percentages:

There were a total of (25 + 24 + 4) = 53 customers the previous week. If we assume they are an unbiased sample and most weeks will have the same types of customers, we can calculate the percentage for each payment type.

(25/53) or 47% paid with cash.

24/53) or 45% paid with debit card

(4/53) or 8 % paid with credit card

Use these percentages on the 500 customers expected the following week to find the likely distribution of payment types among the 500. See the attached table. Round the fractional customers to the nearest whole number as a courtesy.