Game wardens use experiments to help determine the number of deer in the state of North Carolina. Suppose 120 deer are caught, tagged, and released back into the wild. A month later, 800 deer are caught with 16 found to have tags. Using this information, estimate the number of deer in North Carolina.
Accepted Solution
A:
There are about 6000 deer in North Carolina.
We set up a proportion to solve this: 16/800 = 120/x
This is because 16 out of the 800 caught are tagged; there were 120 total deer tagged out of an unknown total number of deer.
Cross multiply, and we have: 16*x = 800(120) 16x = 96000
Divide both sides by 16: 16x/16 = 96000/16 x = 6000