Matt and Mary sold boxes of mints for a charity

Question

Matt and Mary sold boxes of mints for charity. Matt sold 598 boxes of mints,where each box contained 25mints. Mary sold 535 boxes of mints,where each box contained 19 mints. Wthe is the best estimate of the number of mints Matt and Mary sold all together?

Answer 1

Estimate means "approximately," so we need to be rounding these numbers to much more manageable numbers.

598 is close to 600, so we can round to that.

25 can be tricky. General public rule is that you look at the next column over. If it's even you round down. If it's odd, you round up. Some teachers, however, say that you always round 5 up. Confer to what you've been taught about rounding fives, where it will be either 20 or 30 depending on your particular rule.

535 rounds up to 540 (not as tricky as 4 is even)

and 19 rounds up to 20.

 

Using all those roundings, here's what we have so far:

600 * 20 + 540 *20

12000 + 10800 = 22800 mints

 

IF your teacher is using the "always round 5 up" rule, then you would have 600 * 30 instead, and you can solve from there. Just be aware which 5-rounding is being used5.