Maths Homework

[ruggief]

Hi all. How would you answer this question in order to get four marks. It's a year 9 question.
Many thanks

The number of runners in the London Marathon on 25th April 2010 was 37,527. Work out an estimate for the number of runners who's birthday was on that day.

[fiction-factory]

Why on earth would you not use a calculator to work out 37527/365.25 ?
I'd probably reach for a calculator rather than do long division but if one wasn't available and I had no paper I'd estimate it as just over 100 and then settle on 102.5.
You may be able to do it easily NJ but I think you'll find at least 3/4 of adults couldn't do it and certainly over 90% of 14 year old students couldn't do it without a calculator .

[bednobs]

Margaret reference to using a calculator was to do with the marking criteria not a comment on how easy\ hard it would be to do it without one

[margarettom]

When you are teaching probability and statistics, you are focussing on the understanding and interpretation of the ideas involved in these topics, so using a calculator helps with this.

[fiction-factory]

If it was a non-calculator question and working had to be shown then i can see the correct long division could be given two marks