Each of the nine words in the sentence ”The quick brown fox jumps over the…
2014
Each of the nine words in the sentence ”The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” is written on a separate piece of paper. These nine pieces of paper are kept in a box. One of the pieces is drawn at random from the box. The expected length of the word drawn is _____________. (The answer should be rounded to one decimal place.)
Attempted by 3 students.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: 3.8 to 3.9
Solution: Compute the expected (average) length of a randomly drawn word.
List the nine words and their lengths: The (3), quick (5), brown (5), fox (3), jumps (5), over (4), the (3), lazy (4), dog (3).
Sum the lengths: 3 + 5 + 5 + 3 + 5 + 4 + 3 + 4 + 3 = 35.
Compute the average: total length ÷ number of words = 35 ÷ 9 ≈ 3.888...
Round to one decimal place: 3.9.
Answer: 3.9