Problem Set #1

Below are 11 statements. Write a short response to each of them

on a separate sheet of paper that shows conclusively why each of
them has some kind of flawed reasoning. Your short response
should contain three parts:

 Claim (the statement is flawed because…)

 Math Evidence? (show me math if you can, either logical
arguments or actual numbers)
 Inference/Conclusion (therefore I expect that it actually is…)

If you don’t know what to write, put an asterisk by the problem for us to talk over in class.

1. The average income per person in the United States in the year 2016 was approximately $46,000. This means that
families of 4 are, on average, twice as wealthy as families of 2.

2. A survey was taken with 50 people. They were asked the number of hours they slept last night. The average was
taken and it was concluded that the group average for sleep last night was 7.8 hours.

3. Last year workers took a pay cut of 20%. But this year they got a raise of 5% recovering ¼ of what they had lost.
What kind of pay increase must they get to restore a pay cut of 50%?

4. When working out the average hourly wage at the plant, the boss took the 10 dollar wage per hour, added the 20
dollar overtime wage to conclude that the average worker made 15 dollars per hour!

5. Some years ago it was reported that 33.33% of the women attending a major university married faculty members.

6. Mack was complaining to the principal that he had no time to go to school. Just listen to his argument: “There are
365 days in a year and I spend 8 hours a day sleeping which uses up 1/3 of them. That leaves me with roughly 243
days. I spend about 2 hours a day eating with my family, which takes up another 30 days. I now have 213 days left.
Subtract from that the weekends which account for 104 day, and I now have 109 days left. Of course, there is no
school during holidays and winter break, so subtract another 20 days. That leaves me with 89 days which is length
of my summer vacation. So I have no time to go to school!”

7. If you buy 20 items today and they increase in price by 5% tomorrow, the price of the items has gone up by 100%.

8. A newspaper sent out 1200 questionnaires, and asked companies if their prices were fair. On the basis of the
returns, they concluded that companies were not price gouging as Americans thought.

9. During a recent week of storms the death rate jumped up quite a bit. The storms were blamed for the deaths.

10. A survey of college student asked if they were in a faithful relationship. On the basis of results, the surveyor
concluded that since no one answered that they were unfaithful that all, or at leave most, college relationships on
that campus were honest and monogamous.

11. The average SAT score in mathematics for all high school students in a district is 520 points. You pick 10 students
randomly from the school and the first student has a score of 475. Even though this score is lower than 520, the
other 9 scores will make up for it so that the average SAT score for the 10 students will be 700.