Question

You just received your final exam score from your teacher. At the top of the exam, it says you missed eleven questions and got 76 out of 87 questions correct, for a score of 86%. You think your teacher may have made an error when calculating your percentage.

If your teacher did make a mistake, what was most likely done incorrectly?

A. Your teacher divided 87 by 76 instead of 76 by 87.

B. Your teacher miswrote the number of questions missed; it should be nine.

C. Your teacher calculated the percentage of getting 67 out of 78 questions correct.

D. There was no mistake.

Answer 1

C

Explanation:

When dividing 67/78, you get .858, which would be an 86.

Correct way should be 76/87 = .873 --> 87%

Answer 2

Choice C

Explanation:

If you were to divide 87 by 76, you would get 1.14, not 86. 87-76 is not 9, so that can't be the answer. Even if they did only get 9 questions wrong, you still wouldn't get 86. 67÷78 is 86, meaning that the teacher probably made that mistake, making it the right answer.