Question

If the population of tigers is estimated to be 1234 and 54 were captured, marked and released into the wild. How many tigers were captured the second time if 6 of them were marked?

Answer 1

About 137 tigers.

Explanation:

You can solve this by using a proportion...

If 54 tigers out of 1234 were marked, then 6 out of x were marked in the second time.

54 / 1234 = 6 / x

54x = 1234 * 6

54x = 7404

x = 7404 / 54

x = 137.11111111, which can be rounded to about 137.

To check the work, 54 / 1234 is about 0.0438. 6 / 137 is about 0.0438. That means that about 4.38% of the tigers in each batch were marked.