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The school library held a book fair. They tracked the sales of five different genres: Mystery, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Biography, and Adventure. The bar chart below shows the results of their sales, where the letters A, B, C, D, and E along the horizontal axis each represent one genre; however, the numbers on the vertical axis are missing.
Use the following clues to match the letters in the bar chart to the correct genre:
• The number of Mystery books sold is the mode of the data. (Note: The mode is the value that appears most frequently in a data set.)
• There were twice as many Fantasy books sold as Biography books.
• Science Fiction books were the least popular.
• More Adventure books were sold than Biography books.
• The number of Fantasy books sold is the median of the data. (Note: The median is the middle number when the data is arranged in order.)
Can you determine which bar represents each genre?
Let’s approach this step-by-step:
1. The bar representing Mystery books must be the tallest, as it’s the mode (appears most frequently). This is bar B.
2. Science Fiction books were the least popular, so they must be represented by the shortest bar, which is E.
3. The number of Fantasy books sold is the median, which means it’s the middle bar when arranged in order. This is bar C.
4. We’re told that twice as many Fantasy books were sold as Biography books. Looking at the chart, bar A is half the height of bar C. Therefore, A represents Biography books.
5. The only remaining bar, D, must represent Adventure books. This fits with the clue that more Adventure books were sold than Biography books, as bar D is taller than bar A.
Therefore, the final matching is:
A – Biography
B – Mystery
C – Fantasy
D – Adventure
E – Science Fiction
This solution satisfies all the given clues.
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