Question

Chicanery was rampant at the medicine show. If seven eighths of the customers were chicaned and there were 3200 customers , how many were not chicaned?

The answer is not 2800.

Answer 1

See a solution process below:

Explanation:

If `7/8` were chicaned, then:

`1 - 7/8 => 8/8 - 7/8 => (8 - 7)/8 => 1/8` were not chicaned.

We can now reword the question as:

What is 1/8 of 3200?

In this problem the work "of" mean "the product of" or "multiply by":

`1/8 xx 3200 => 3200/8 = 400`

400 Customers were not chicaned.