i do not understand how to answer this problem at all.

Question

suppose that your school day begins at 7:30 am and ends at 3:00 pm. You eat lunch at 11:00 am. If there is a fire drill at a random time during the day, what is the probability that it begins before lunch?

Answer 1

Hi Brook,

 

If the variable "X" is the hours in the school day, we could assign 7:30 a.m. to be 0, 11:00 am would be 3.5 (it is 3.5 hours from the start of the day at 7:30).  We could assign 3:00 pm would be 7.5 (it is 7.5 hours from the start of the day at 7:30).

 

So the total number of hours in the school day is 7.5

The number of hours up until 11:00 a.m. is 3.5

 

The probability would then be  3.5/7.5 =7/15 = 0.4666666666666666