Average or total

[chil]

I have a small problem I can't work out although I am sure there is an obvious answer. I write a newsletter for my Scout.District and wanted to do a piece about the number of camps that scouts had attended over a year. To make it interesting I wanted to make more of the figures but have gone wrong somewhere.I made a table of the venues camped and the number of nights of each camp and the number of scouts that camped.To find the number of nights camped under canvas over one year I multiplyed nights at each camp by scouts at each camp ie. 2 night camp 12 scouts camping equals 24 nights camped. Doing this individually for each camp and then adding the totals gave me the toal nights for the year. If however I add all the nights camped and multiply it by all the scouts that camped I get a different answer. Example 1 camp 2 nights 12 scouts equals as I said 24 nights BUT 2 camps each of 2 nights (4 nights) and each of 12 scouts(24 scouts) comes to 96. I know it's stupid but I cant see it Help!

[dbevhead]

not being a genius but it look like you are counting the nights twice. as 24 scouts when only 12 went. But I could be wrong! Hope it helps.

[stevie21]

Agreed - you're expecting to get an answer that's double the first one, right?
You're sums are doubling TWO of the factors instead of one. Instead of just multiplying the final answer by 2 you're multiplying nights and scouts by two so your final answer is twice what it should be.

Just multiply whichever numbers you've got without any inbetween sums. The first one would be
1x2x12
and the second
2x2x12

[chil]

OK guys I know what you are saying and I don't want to get complicated but my list is of 25 camps with various number of nights and scouts .

2nights 12 scouts

7 nights 45 scoouts

12 nights 8 scouts and so on

--------------------------------

21nights 65 Scouts

To work out the total nights I can do each individual camp and add them together but can I get the same answer using just the totals. This is not important but I am confused and I know that that is silly But !!