Here's the problem (there's more to it, but I'm just describing the part I supposedly got wrong):
ACME Corp. has 100 sales reps whose monthly sales of Widgets breakdown as follows...
One of the questions related to this was, "How many total Widgets did ACME sell this month?" The blue numbers on the right are what I calculated the total sales to be for each grouping by just multiplying the number of reps in that group by the average number of units they sold. The red number was my final solution, which my instructor says is wrong. The answer, allegedly, is 2,171. She even said that because it is not a whole number should have been a clue it was wrong (I replied that "Widgets" are imaginary, undefined things, so how was I suppose to know it wasn't something you could sell half of? I meant it kind of as a joke, but not really).
So I just wasted a Saturday night quintuple-checking my math, and trying to think of some other method for doing this. It just seems so obvious it has to be this way. For example, to make it simpler, if 100 reps averaged 10 sales, then whether it was 1 rep who sold 1,000 and 99 sold zero, or they all sold 10, these 100 reps have to have made 1,000 sales, right???
This is driving me crazy. What am I missing???
Aaron
P.S. My parents can't figure it out either.
ACME Corp. has 100 sales reps whose monthly sales of Widgets breakdown as follows...
| Units | Number | Percent | Average | Widgets Sold | |
| Sold | of Reps | of Reps | Sold Per Rep | Per Group | |
| 0-10 | 50 | 50% | 6.5 | 325.0 | |
| 11-25 | 20 | 20% | 15.3 | 306.0 | |
| 26-50 | 15 | 15% | 36.7 | 550.5 | |
| 51-75 | 10 | 10% | 57.2 | 572.0 | |
| 76-100 | 5 | 5% | 80.8 | 404.0 | |
| 2,157.5 |
One of the questions related to this was, "How many total Widgets did ACME sell this month?" The blue numbers on the right are what I calculated the total sales to be for each grouping by just multiplying the number of reps in that group by the average number of units they sold. The red number was my final solution, which my instructor says is wrong. The answer, allegedly, is 2,171. She even said that because it is not a whole number should have been a clue it was wrong (I replied that "Widgets" are imaginary, undefined things, so how was I suppose to know it wasn't something you could sell half of? I meant it kind of as a joke, but not really).
So I just wasted a Saturday night quintuple-checking my math, and trying to think of some other method for doing this. It just seems so obvious it has to be this way. For example, to make it simpler, if 100 reps averaged 10 sales, then whether it was 1 rep who sold 1,000 and 99 sold zero, or they all sold 10, these 100 reps have to have made 1,000 sales, right???
This is driving me crazy. What am I missing???
Aaron
P.S. My parents can't figure it out either.
