SOLUTION: I am having some problems trying to figure out the formula for this word problem....can you help? A taste test with 200 randomly selected people found that only three of them sa

Question 1938: I am having some problems trying to figure out the formula for this word problem....can you help?
A taste test with 200 randomly selected people found that only three of them said that they would buy a box of new Glazed Cheerio's cereal. How many boxes could the manufacturer expect to sell in a country of 280 million people?
--I started with 3/200=x/280million and didn't get much farther than that.
Answer by longjonsilver(2297) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
to be honest, no formula needed, this is just a ratio question.
Start with what you know, then find what 1 is, then find what you are asked for.
so, we know from 200 there would be 3
so, we infer therefore that a sample of 1 would have (3/200) buyers (yes, this is nonsensical, but it gets you there.
so we imply again that in a sample of 280 million (280,000,000) there would be (3/200)*280000000 = 4,200,000 buyers.
There may well be an "instant" method, but this 3 line approach can be used for unit conversion questions - they are tackled all in the same way. It has never let me down and i never confuse myself and there is no "formula" to remember either :-)
jon.
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