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Ugh. I hated that problem.

 

I don't know if you had the same problem I did, but I found the wording confusing. What they mean to say is that you are going to put eggs in a bundle and sell each bundle for 80 cents. How many eggs should be in each bundle?

 

Does that help?

 

I dislike this problem because it's not a realistic scenario. A seller wouldn't decide the price before deciding how many eggs go in a bundle. He would decide how many eggs to put in a bundle and then decide on a price. The only scenario that does make sense if it's at a dollar store or something, where everything costs $1, and he's trying to figure out how many eggs to sell for a dollar. But for 80 cents??

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Eggs are bought at $8.50 per 100. If 4% of the eggs bought are broken and discarded, how many eggs, to the nearest number, must be sold for 80 cents to gain 80%?

 

We just can't figure out how to do this one. (The answer is 5 eggs.)

 

I didn't understand the question at first until I read Cosmos explanation. It is a very poorly worded problem.

 

Basically, after you throw out 4% of the eggs, you want to make an 80% profit on the remaining eggs. So, the first thing you need to do is figure out how much you need to charge/egg in order to make an 80% profit.

 

(since you paid 8.50 for now 96 eggs, the cost/egg 0.0885. If you want an 80% profit, multiply that by 1.8 and you get ~ .16. Simply divide 80 cents by 16 cents and you get 5 eggs/bundle.

 

Does that help? (FWIW, I can't imagine any child untangling their wording easily.)

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Ok, thanks! We have had a few problems from this book that aren't worded very well, but usually I can see it right away. :tongue_smilie:

 

Yes, sometimes you can chalk it up to a different dialect. Watch out for the chapter on financial transactions -- I did a lot of translating there.

 

(I still say this is a bad problem, even without the wording issue. But it's only the second bad problem I've come across in several years of doing Singapore, so I guess I'll cut them some slack.)

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Yes, sometimes you can chalk it up to a different dialect. Watch out for the chapter on financial transactions -- I did a lot of translating there.

 

(I still say this is a bad problem, even without the wording issue. But it's only the second bad problem I've come across in several years of doing Singapore, so I guess I'll cut them some slack.)

 

We're doing the financial transactions chapter now. :D

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Cosmos and Jen3boys, sorry to hijack -- are you using the NEM workbook too? Or only the text?

 

We aren't using the workbook here. There's a lot in the text if you do all the parts. Plenty for my ds, anyway. We supplement with some MathCounts practice problems, but that's about it.

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Cosmos and Jen3boys, sorry to hijack -- are you using the NEM workbook too? Or only the text?

 

We have been going back and forth between NEM1 and AoPS.

We used the NEM workbook for the first few chapters. Some of the problems didn't seem to match up with the textbook, so we've been sticking to the text problems.

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Thanks Cosmos and Jen3boys. Just one more question (PM-ed you this Cosmos): do you buy the Teacher's Manual, Solutions Manual or both?

 

I have the TM but not the solutions manual. I like to have all the answers available to check quickly, but I don't mind working some of the problems myself.

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I have the TM but not the solutions manual. I like to have all the answers available to check quickly, but I don't mind working some of the problems myself.

 

This is what I recommend too. The TM is very helpful for some of the Problem Solving sections. They often discuss multiple ways to approach a problem.

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