Question

A bus makes several stops along a city street, with no passengers boarding the bus at any stop. At the first stop, 1/3 of the passengers exit. At the second stop, 3/7 of the passengers exit the bus. What fraction of the original passengers remain on the bus?

Answer 1

The fraction of passengers remaining on the bus is 5/21

Explanation:

To answer this question, we should choose any arbitrary value for the number of passengers on the bus initially.

We should have in mind that whatever value we shall be choosing, it should be a multiple of 3 and 7 since that is what we shall be dividing with.

Now, let’s choose the value 42 for the number of passengers originally at the on the bus.

At the first stop, 1/3 of the passengers exit. The number of passengers that exited will be 1/3 * 42 = 14

At the second stop, the number of passengers that exited is 3/7 of original. That would be 3/7 * 42 = 18 passengers

The total number of passengers that this have exited since we do not have any new addition to the original number is 18 + 14 = 32 passengers

Now the number remaining on the bus will be 42 - 32 = 10 passengers

This is equal to a fraction of 10/42 = 5/21