8. How much difference was there between Mary's average and Nell's?
9. Write five other problems about these averages, and solve each of them.
_Samples of Undesirable Applications of Arithmetic_[1]
Will has XXI marbles, XII jackstones, XXXVI pieces of string. How many things had he?
George's kite rose CDXXXV feet and Tom's went LXIII feet higher. How high did Tom's kite rise?
If from DCIV we take CCIV the result will be a number IV times as large as the number of dollars Mr. Dane paid for his horse. How much did he pay for his horse?
Hannah has 5/8 of a dollar, Susie 7/25, Nellie 3/4, Norah 13/16. How much money have they all together?
A man saves 3-17/80 dollars a week. How much does he save in a year?
A tree fell and was broken into 4 pieces, 13-1/6 feet, 10-3/7 feet, 8-1/2 feet, and 7-16/21 feet long. How tall was the tree?
Annie's father gave her 20 apples to divide among her friends. She gave each one 2-2/9 apples apiece. How many playmates had she?
John had 17-2/5 apples. He divided his whole apples into fifths. How many pieces had he in all?
A landlady has 3-3/7 pies to be divided among her 8 boarders. How much will each boarder receive?
There are twenty columns of spelling words in Mary's lesson and 16 words in each column. How many words are in her lesson?
There are 9 nuts in a pint. How many pints in a pile of 5,888,673 nuts?
The Adams school contains eight rooms; each room contains 48 pupils; if each pupil has eight cents, how much have they together?
A pile of wood in the form of a cube contains 15-1/2 cords. What are the dimensions to the nearest inch?
A man 6 ft. high weighs 175 lb. How tall is his wife who is of similar build, and weighs 125 lb.?
A stick of timber is in the shape of the frustum of a square pyramid, the lower base being 22 in. square and the upper 14 in. square. How many cubic feet in the log, if it is 22 ft. long?
Mr. Ames, being asked his age, replied: "If you cube one half of my age and add 41,472 to the result, the sum will be one half the cube of my age. How old am I?"
[1] The following and later problems are taken from actual textbooks or courses of study or state examinations; to avoid invidious comparisons, they are not exact quotations, but are equivalents in principle and form, as stated in the preface.