Uncle Rod in Chicago
Tinku was very happy. The next day he would go to Chicago with his mom to visit uncle Rod. Tanya was thrilled that she could also go with them. She liked Tinku and his mom, and also wanted to see Chicago. She was glad that her parents gave her the permission to go.
Upon reaching Chicago they went to uncle Rod’s house. Uncle Rod had a daughter named Jessica who was about the same age as Tinku.
Jessica: Hi Tinku.
Tinku: Hello (shyly).
Jessica: Hello, you must be Tanya. I am Jessica.
The trio became good friends.
Later. Jessica: Tinku, I know you like baseball. Do you like the Chicago Cubs?
Tinku: Kind of. But I really love the New York Yankees.
Wrigley Field
Jessica: Dad has tickets to the Cubs game in Wrigley field on Thursday.
Tinku: That is great. Who are the Cubs playing on Thursday? How many tickets does he have?
Jessica: The Cubs are going to play the Atlanta Braves. Dad has 4 tickets and that means dad will take Tanya, you and I.
Tinku could not wait for Thursday. He was very happy when uncle Rod said: Tinku, Tanya and Jessica. Let us go to the ball game.
How many people can sit in this stadium?
They arrived at Wrigley Field ahead of time. Tinku was looking around. He said to Tanya: It is a big stadium. Is n’t it? I bet you zillions of fans can watch the game here.
Jessica looked around and counted: There are 32 seats in this aisle.
Tinku: How many aisles are there?
Jessica looked around for a long time and then said: May be about 25 in each row. Some rows have fewer and others have more.
Tinku: I wish I had a calculator. What is 25 times 32?
Tanya replied instantly, “800.”
Tinku: Jessica, I forgot to tell you, Tanya is a whiz. Tanya, how did you get to 800?
Tanya: 25 times 4 is 100 and 32 is 4 times 8. So 25 times 32 would be 800. How many rows of seats are there?
For this Jessica had to stand up and count real hard. Finally she sat down and said: I think 50.
They did not have to wait long for Tanya to tell them that 50 times 800 was 40000. That meant 40,000 fans could watch the game.
Tinku noticed, that they had not counted all the rows. There were more seats on the other side. But some of the rows were kind of smaller too.
Uncle Rod who had cleverly let them figure all this out, finally said, “There are 39012 seats in Wrigley Field.”
Challenge
In Tanya’s class, students work in groups of 4. In her section, there are 5 such groups. How many students are in her section? There are 4 sections in her grade. How many students are in her grade if every section has the same number of students. The school has students from grades 1 to 8. The number of students in every grade is the same. How many students go to her school?
Solution: 4 students per group x 5 groups in the section = 20 students in her section.
4 sections/grade x 20 students/group = 80 students in her grade.
80 students per grade x 8 grades in the school = 640 students in the school.
Supplementary
- Parade
Jimmy went to watch a parade. In the parade, there were soldiers walking in a group of 6 x 4. How many soldiers would these be ?
There were 20 such groups of 6 x 4 in the parade. How many soldiers were there total in these groups ?
Answer: In one group, there were 6 x 4 = 24 soldiers.
In 20 such groups, there would be 24 x 20 = 480 soldiers.
- Lottery: The winning ticket for the BigLotto this week would fetch $30,000,000 (thirty million) this week. Jimmy’s dad just bought a ticket. Jimmy and his dad are dreaming together.
Dad: Jimmy, we will be rich if we win. You and I have lots of friends. We will give away $100,000 each to 100 friends of ours. We will still have lots of money left.
Jimmy: How much, dad ?
Dad: We would give away 100 x 100,000 = 10,000,000 which is 10 million dollars out of the 30 million we win. So we would have 30 million minus 10 million = 20 million dollars left. We would be rich.
Math Stories For You 