Question

Tony is planning to read the novel. The table below shows information about the novel, Tony’s reading speed, and the amount of time he plans to spend reading the novel each day. If Tony reads at the rates given in the table, which of the following is closest to the number of days it would take Tony to read the entire novel?

Number of hours Tony plans to read the novel per day	3
Number of parts in the novel	8
Number of chapters in the novel	239
Number of words Tony reads per minute	250
Number of pages in the novel	1078
Number of words in the novel	349168

(a) 6
(b) 8
(c) 23
(d) 324

Answer 1

Hint: We solve this problem by using simple mathematics. Here, we have a number of words and the speed of Tony's reading. First, we take for how many words Tony will read in 1 hour and then we calculate how many hours he takes to complete 349168 words. Since Tony spends only 3 hours a day we can easily calculate the number of days.

Complete step-by-step solution:
We are given that there are a total of 349168 words in the novel.
So let us assume the number of words as
\[\Rightarrow W=349168\]
We are given Tony's reading speed as he reads 250 words per minute.
Let us assume the speed of Tony’s reading as
\[\Rightarrow S=250\dfrac{Words}{\min }\]
Let us convert this speed from words per minute to words per hour.
By multiplying the speed by 60 we get the speed in words per hour because of \[1\min =\dfrac{1}{60}hr\].
By substituting\[1\min =\dfrac{1}{60}hr\]in above equation we get
\[\begin{align}
  & \Rightarrow S=250\times 60\dfrac{Words}{hr} \\
 & \Rightarrow S=15000\dfrac{Words}{hr} \\
\end{align}\]
Now, let us find that for how many hours Tony will take to complete reading of 349168 words as
\[\Rightarrow T=\dfrac{W}{S}hr\]
By substituting the required values we get
\[\begin{align}
  & \Rightarrow T=\dfrac{349168}{15000}hr \\
 & \Rightarrow T=23.27hr \\
\end{align}\]
So, tony takes 23.27 hours to read 349168 pages completely.
We are given that Tony reads only 3 hours a day.
So, by dividing the time by 3 we get
\[\begin{align}
  & \Rightarrow T=\dfrac{23.27}{3}days \\
 & \Rightarrow T=7.75days \\
\end{align}\]
So, we can say that Tony takes 7.75 days to read the novel completely.
Therefore, the closest number of days is 8. So, option (b) is the correct answer.

Note: Students will make mistakes in solving the problem. They mentioned in the question that the novel has 349168 words. But students will consider that either each part of the novel or each chapter of the novel has 349168 words which result in the wrong answer. That is they may consider that there are a total number of words as
\[\Rightarrow W=349168\times 8\]
This results in a wrong answer because we are directly given the number of words of the novel. Considering the numbers to its respective parameters is most important in this question.