Math help

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Kerrieyarwood83

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The college bistro sells cakes. The manager needs to know how many of each variety sells in order to adjust his buying strategy. On one day he sells 200 jam tarts, 600 apple pies, 400 chocolate chip cookies, 200 muffins, 900 cup cakes and 100 cereal bars. He decides not stock any line which doesn't reach 5% of the total sales.
Which lines, if any, does he decides to cut out?
How many more per day would the line/s need to sell to prevent him chopping them from the menu?
 
You have 2 apples and 3 oranges. What percent of the total is apples?
 
Well to start figure out what percent of sales each of those cakes was.
 
On one day he sells 200 jam tarts, 600 apple pies, 400 chocolate chip cookies, 200 muffins, 900 cup cakes and 100 cereal bars

So he sells (200+600+400+ 200 + 900+100)items =2400 items

I suspect if we knew what 5% of 2400 items equals that would be helpful, don't you think?
 
Kerrieyarwood83 said:
The college bistro sells cakes. The manager needs to know how many of each variety sells in order to adjust his buying strategy. On one day he sells 200 jam tarts, 600 apple pies, 400 chocolate chip cookies, 200 muffins, 900 cup cakes and 100 cereal bars. He decides not stock any line which doesn't reach 5% of the total sales.
Which lines, if any, does he decides to cut out?
How many more per day would the line/s need to sell to prevent him chopping them from the menu?
Click to expand...
Doesn't "total sales" usually refer to the value of what was sold, not to the number of items sold? It seems to me that the problem is trying to compare apples to oranges, so to speak. A pie should be worth a lot more than a cookie, so selling fewer of those should not cause them to be dropped.

So I think the problem itself is flawed; but taking it at face value, what others have said is appropriate.
 
Dr.Peterson said:
Doesn't "total sales" usually refer to the value of what was sold, not to the number of items sold? It seems to me that the problem is trying to compare apples to oranges, so to speak. A pie should be worth a lot more than a cookie, so selling fewer of those should not cause them to be dropped.

So I think the problem itself is flawed; but taking it at face value, what others have said is appropriate.
Click to expand...
You raised an excellent point, something that I totally missed. However I do not think that you should say that A pie should be worth a lot more than a cookie but rather the profit of a pie should be worth a lot more than a cookie. Possibly that is what you meant by worth more
 
Thanks for the advice, I have a lot of qns that aren't making sense to me. I'm doing revision qns for functional skills maths.
 
Wouldn't you pay more for a pie than for a cookie? And doesn't "sales" mean the amount taken in, not just the profit? I'd call that "worth".

But there's a reason I don't tend to answer the finance questions. I'm not concerned about what specific number they should go by, just the lack of any mention of money in the problem.
 
Yes, you did say sales as well as the original problem.

The thing is why is sales in $ more important than the number of each item sold? In my mind the profit is more important then the sales or the total number of items sold.

So the question come down to which is better to know the total revenue or the total amount of items sold? That answer really depends on the markup. If the mark up is always the same percentage on each item then I would prefer to know the total revenue at the end of the day. Since the problem talked about total sales being the total number of sales I feel that we should do the problem that way. Not just because that is what the problem asked for but because there is no reason to think that maybe the problem is written wrong with the given information
 
As I said, taking the problem at face value (and using only the data provided), all we can do is to go by the number of items sold. It just seems odd to me.

But I'll defer to any business-oriented people as to what would make a more realistic problem.
 
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