To find an estimate number of bass in a lake...

Question

To find an estimate of the number of bass in a lake, rangers tagged 50 bass and released them in the lake. Then they netted 400 bass and found that 20 of them were tagged.  What is a reasonable estimate of the number of bass in the lake?

 

A.250

B.900

C.1,000

D.1,800

Answer 1

20/400 of the netted bass of the lake are tagged. So, if there were 50 tagged basses in all, then we can use the "butterfly method" for equivalent fractions:

 

20/400 = 50/x

1/20 = 50/x

x = 1000