If approximately 600,200 people per year die from heart disease in the US, this is equivalent to how many deaths per minute?

Question

I need help figuring out how to set this problem up so it can easily be completed.

Answer 1

Hi Emily,

 

The first step is to figure out how many minutes there are in a year. I don't know that off the top of my head, so we break the year into smaller parts.

 

There are 365 days in a year (the usual number of days per year for this kind of calculation). If you know how many minutes are in one day, you can multiply that by 365. I don't know how many minutes are in 1 day, so let's break it down some more.

 

There are 24 hours in 1 day. So 24 X 365 is the number of hours per year. And guess what - we know how many minutes there are in 1 hour -- 60! So 60 minutes per hour X 24 hours per day X 365 days per year. Calculate that, and you have minutes per year.

 

Now you divide 600,200 deaths by the number of minutes per year, and you get deaths per minute.

 

Hope that was helpful.

 

-- Bruce

 

 

 

 

Answer 2

You have 600,200 deaths/year. Multiply this by 1 year/365 days.

The years cancel, leaving you with 600,200 deaths/365 days. This is the same as 1644.38356 deaths/day.

Multiply this new rate by 1 day/1440 minutes. (Because the are 60 minutes in an hour and 24 hours in a day. 24x60 minutes in a day.)

This leaves you with 1644.38356 deaths/1440 minutes, after canceling the days.

This is the same as 1.14193303 deaths/minute.