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A single box of colored pencils contains 30 pencils of different colors: red, blue, green, yellow, and purple. There is an equal number of each color of pencil in a box.
Mr. Garcia surveys his art class to find out what color pencil they would like to use for their special Friday art project.
The results of the survey are tallied as follows:
| Color | Number of Students |
|---|---|
| Red | 13 |
| Blue | 8 |
| Green | 6 |
| Yellow | 9 |
| Purple | 4 |
(a) If Mr. Garcia wants to make sure that each student receives the colored pencil they would like, how many boxes of colored pencils does he need to buy?
(b) After each student gets their pencil of choice on Friday, how many of each color of pencil will he have left over?
(a) From the tally chart, we know that the most popular color is red, and 13 students selected that color. This means Mr. Garcia needs to buy enough boxes to have at least 13 red pencils.
There are 30 pencils in a box, there are 5 different colors, and there are an equal number of each color in a box. This means there are 30 ÷ 5 = 6 pencils of each color in a box.
Since there are 6 red pencils in a single box, then there are 12 red pencils in two boxes, and 18 red pencils in three boxes. This means Mr. Garcia needs to buy three boxes to get enough red pencils for the students.
(b) Since there are 6 pencils of each color in a box, then if Mr. Garcia buys three boxes there will be 18 pencils of each color.
For each color of pencil, we subtract the value of the tally from 18 to see how many will be left over of that color:
• Red: 18 – 13 = 5 left over
• Blue: 18 – 8 = 10 left over
• Green: 18 – 6 = 12 left over
• Yellow: 18 – 9 = 9 left over
• Purple: 18 – 4 = 14 left over
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