How Many Buy Vegetables?

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Olivergolsen

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There are 25 vegetable stalls at the market and they each sell at the rate of 10% (1 person buys out of every 10 attending the market).
100 people attend the market that day. Each buyer can only buy once, from one vegetable stall.
How many of the 100 will buy?
Please show your work! Thanks!
 
Are you serious? You want someone to show you how to do your problem? I do not think you will find someone to do that. This is a math help forum where we expect students to do solve their own problems with help from forum volunteers.

If you seriously want help then please follow the guidelines of this forum by showing us your work so that we know where you are stuck.
 
Jomo said:
Are you serious? You want someone to show you how to do your problem? I do not think you will find someone to do that. This is a math help forum where we expect students to do solve their own problems with help from forum volunteers.

If you seriously want help then please follow the guidelines of this forum by showing us your work so that we know where you are stuck.
Click to expand...

What kind of help are you able to provide? Point me in the right direction?
 
Olivergolsen said:
What kind of help are you able to provide? Point me in the right direction?
Click to expand...
For us to help you effectively or point you to the right direction - we need to know where you are standing?

If you say you do not understand "anything" about the problem - then we would have to start with explaining to you what was meant by 10%?

That would require lot of time!!

So share your work with us and point to us exactly where you are stuck - so that we get moving!
 
Olivergolsen said:
There are 25 vegetable stalls at the market and they each sell at the rate of 10% (1 person buys out of every 10 attending the market).
100 people attend the market that day. Each buyer can only buy once, from one vegetable stall.
How many of the 100 will buy?
Please show your work! Thanks!
Click to expand...
I just don't understand the question. Did you quote it exactly as given to you? Can you tell us at least your understanding of what it means?

Specifically, is it saying that each seller sells to 10% of those who attend (which is impossible if each only buys from one)?
 
I'm not quoting this problem from anywhere ... it's a real-life problem! Here's my thinking.

If there was one vegetable seller, 10 out of the 100 would buy, right? So those 10 buyers go home. Now there are 90 and because there's another 24 vegetable sellers, 10% of the 90 will buy from him = 9. So those 9 go home.

Now there are 81 left ... and there are 23 more vegetable sellers ... once you work it all the way down, 92.79% of the 100 will buy from 25 sellers.

In a way it makes sense ... after all, all 100 of them want to buy vegetables.

Where have I gone wrong in my thinking of this?
 
Olivergolsen said:
I'm not quoting this problem from anywhere ... it's a real-life problem! Here's my thinking.
...
Where have I gone wrong in my thinking of this?
Click to expand...
You've gone wrong from the start by not defining what you mean!
Olivergolsen said:
There are 25 vegetable stalls at the market and they each sell at the rate of 10% (1 person buys out of every 10 attending the market).
100 people attend the market that day. Each buyer can only buy once, from one vegetable stall.
How many of the 100 will buy?
Please show your work! Thanks!
Click to expand...
Please tell us what you mean by "they each sell at the rate of 10%".

Also, tell us more about the real-life situation, so we can help you figure out what you mean. Where did that 10% rate come from?
 
What I mean by 10% is that for every 100 people who pass by a given vegetable stall, 10 of them buy.
 
But that can't be true if everyone buys only at one place, unless you can guarantee that only 40 people pass by each stall (on average). There can be only 100 sales for 25 stalls, so each stall can only have 4 sales. And if you don't know whether everyone buys (though you said they all want to), then it might be fewer than 4 per stall.

Your assumptions are mutually contradictory; that is why your calculations didn't work out. You can't get good conclusions from faulty "facts".
 
Suppose 100 people come to a market with 25 stands and will buy from 1 stand and go home. If everything is equal (location, merchandise, etc) then on average 4 (different) people will go to each stand and buy something.
This contradicts everything you said.

For example, when all hundred people path by stand #1, then only 4 (on average) will buy something--NOT 10%.
When the remaining 96 people path stand #2, on average 4 will by something. 10% of 96 is NOT 4.

If everything is equal (location, merchandise, etc) here is what you want to do. Find the total number of sales for a given time period (one day, a weekend, a month--you decide) and divide it by 25 and you will have the average number of sales that is expected from each stall.
 
This is very helpful, I appreciate your expertise. Can we look at the real-life situation?

Instead of it being a vegetable market, it's a directory website with 25 accountants. On their own websites, the accountants have a "lead conversion rate" of 10%. For every 100 people who visit their website, 10 will call the business (a phone call is a lead). This is a fact that we know.

But on the directory site we have all 25 accountants in one place (like the vegetable market). We know their individual conversion rate is 10%. I.e. If a website visitor visits an accountant's individual website there is a 10% chance he will phone the business and convert to a lead.

But what is the conversion rate for each lawyer on the directory site? Does it go down because the is more choice?

What is the total conversion rate of the directory website? The visitor has more choice so the odds of him calling one of the 25 go up? This is what interests me most.

On the directory site, It's possible that the visitor will call more than one accountant or may he call none if he doesn't like what he sees.

Should I simply add the probabilities. 25 x 1/10 = 2.5 ... 25% visitors become leads on the directory website?
 
I think you need more data. Anything one could say at this point would be a guess. (You've suggested several such guesses.) Do you have any count of visitors to the directory site to compare to the numbers of visitors to each individual from the site?
 
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