Maths Olympiad Prep

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Algebra Difficulty 2.9 Junior Find the answer

On a certain math exam, 10%10\% of the students got 7070 points, 25%25\% got 8080 points, 20%20\% got 8585 points, 15%15\% got 9090 points, and the rest got 9595 points. What is the difference between the mean and the median score on this exam?

Pick one

Solution

To begin, we see that the remaining 30%30\% of the students got 9595 points. Assume that there are 2020 students; we see that 22 students got 7070 points, 55 students got 8080 points, 44 students got 8585 points, 33 students got 9090 points, and 66 students got 9595 points. The median is 8585, since the 10th10^{\text{th}} and 11th11^{\text{th}} terms are both 8585. The mean is 70(2)+80(5)+85(4)+90(3)+95(6)20=172020=86\dfrac{70\,(2)+80\,(5)+85\,(4)+90\,(3)+95\,(6)}{20}=\dfrac{1720}{20}=86. The difference between the mean and median, therefore, is (B) 1\boxed{\textbf{(B)}\ 1}.

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Source: NuminaMath-1.5, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.