If The Shoe Fits – A “Normal” Cinderella Story

5E Worksheet
Engage
In the story of Cinderella, her fairy godmother creates a set of glass slippers and a beautiful
dress for her to wear to the ball. While at the ball, Cinderella meets the Prince and they fall
madly in love with each other. Unfortunately the fairy godmother’s spell only works until the
last stroke of 12 at midnight. Cinderella is having such a wonderful time at the ball that she
loses track of time until the bells start tolling. Knowing that the spell will soon end, Cinderella
rushes from the ball, and in her haste, she loses one of her glass slippers. The Prince, desperate
to find his lost love, searches the kingdom for the one woman whose foot will fit into the shoe
perfectly.
If there are 1000 women in the kingdom with a mean shoe size of 9 and a standard deviation of
1, and if we know that Cinderella’s step-sisters’ feet are too big for the shoe, what is
Cinderella’s shoe size?
Write your prediction on the worksheet. We will come back to this question at the end of the
lesson and you will be able to revise your answer if you choose.
1. Prediction: Cinderella’s shoe size is student answers may vary.

Explore
Use the normal distribution puzzle manipulative to answer the following questions:
1. How many pieces are in the bag? 8

2. The largest pieces represent what percentage of values? 34

3. The mean is represented by what value on the manipulative? 0 sd

4. How many pieces are above the mean? 4

5. What percentage of values are above the mean? 50

6. How many pieces are below the mean? 4

7. What percentage of values is below the mean? 50

8. What percentage of values is above +3 sd from the mean? 0.15

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Explain
1. What percent of values is within one standard deviation from the mean? 68

2. What percent of values is within two standard deviations from the mean? 95

3. What percent of values is less than two standard deviations above the mean? 97.5

4. What percent of values is greater than one standard deviation below the mean? 84

Elaborate
1. Mr. Merrill has 125 students in his Algebra 1 classes. He determined that the scores on
his midterm exam were normally distributed with a mean of 72 and a standard
deviation of 8. What percentage of students scored between 64 and 88? 81.5

2. A group of 625 students has a mean age of 15.8 years with a standard deviation of 0.6
years. What percentage of students is younger than 14.6 years old? 2.5

3. A radar gun is used to measure speeds of cars on a highway. The speeds are normally
distributed with a mean of 68 mph and a standard deviation of 6 mph. What percentage
of cars is travelling faster than 80 mph? 2.5

4. The annual salaries of employees at a large company are normally distributed with a
mean of $50,000 and a standard deviation of $20,000. What percentage of people
earned between $50,000 and $90,000? 47.5

5. Entry to a certain university is determined by a national test. The scores on this test are
normally distributed with a mean of 500 and a standard deviation of 100. Rich wants to
be admitted to this university and he knows that he must score better than 80% of the
students who took the test. Rich took the test and scored a 600. Will he be admitted?
Why or why not? Yes; Rich scored 1 sd above the mean, which is better than 84% of the
students who took the test.

6. If there are 1000 women in the kingdom with a mean shoe size of 9 and a standard
deviation of 1 and we know that Cinderella’s step-sisters’ feet are too big for the shoe,
what is Cinderella’s shoe size? Size 6 or less
Explain how you chose this answer: Cinderella’s shoe size must be less than 3 sd below
the mean.

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