1998 CEMC Pascal Problems/Problem 3

Problem

The pie chart shows a percentage breakdown of $1000$ votes in a student election. How many votes did Sue receive?


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$\text{ (A) }\ 550 \qquad\text{ (B) }\ 350 \qquad\text{ (C) }\ 330 \qquad\text{ (D) }\ 450 \qquad\text{ (E) }\ 935$

Solution 1

To find the number of votes that Sue got, we can find the percentage of votes that she got, and multiply that by the total number of votes overall.

We can find the percentage of votes that Sue got by subtracting the percentage of votes that came from other students from $100\%$:

$100\% - (45\% + 20\%) = 100\% - 65\% = 35\%$


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We then get that the number of votes that Sue got is $35\% \times 1000 = 0.35 \times 1000 = \boxed {\textbf {(B) } 350}$

~anabel.disher

Solution 2

To find the number of votes that Sue got, we can subtract the votes that the other students got, and subtract it from $1000$.

Jim got $20\% \times 1000 = 0.20 \times 1000 = 200$ votes.

Jane got $45\% \times 1000 = 0.45 \times 1000 = 450$ votes.

Altogether, Jim and Jane got $200 + 450 = 650$ votes.

Subtracting this from the total, we find that Sue got $1000 - 650 = \boxed {\textbf {(B) } 350}$ votes.

~anabel.disher