Hawaii had about 1,262,840 residents and 28,793 marriages. What is the marriage rate per 1,000 residents for Hawaii? Where is Hawaii located on the histogram?

Question

The overall problem is the histogram below gives the marriage rate per 1,000 people for 49 U.S. states in 2004. (Nevada, with a rate of 62 marriages per 1,000 people, was let off so the plot would fit on the page.)

Answer 1

When expressing a number as some multiple of another number, you need to divide the original by the size of the group you're splitting it into.

 

1,262,840 residents is the same as

1,262,840/1,000,000 = 1.262840 million residents, or

1,262,840/1,000 = 1,262.840 thousand residents

 

The marriage rate per thousand residents is then the number of marriages divided by the number of thousands of residents:

28,793 marriages / 1,262.840 thousand residents

 

You'll have to interpret how this number fits onto the histogram.