If 30 3rd graders owned birds, how many third graders were surveyed?

Reptiles 5%
Birds 5%
Fish 10%
Cats 35%
Dogs 45%

I did 5% of 30 = .05 x 30 = 1.5
30/1.5 = 20 third graders

BUT I am thinking I am doing something wrong? Where did I go wrong?
Should it be 30/.05 = 600 students were surveyed?

I want to understand my steps on where I messed up? Could you show me?

Just think about your answer of 20 third graders.

If you have 20 third graders, how can 30 of them have birds ????

Do you know algebra? then ...

let the number of students be x
.05x = 30
x = 30/.05= 600

If you don't know algebra ...

5% of the students = 30
so 1% of the students = 6 , (divide by 5)
then 100% = 6(100) =600

Sure, let's break down the process step by step.

First, you correctly calculated that 5% of 30 is 0.05 x 30 = 1.5. This means that out of the 30 third graders, 1.5 (or 1 in this case because it's hard to have half a student) own birds.

Where you went wrong is the next step. Instead of dividing 30 by 1.5, you need to divide it by the percentage of students who own birds, which is 5%.

To do this, you need to convert 5% into a decimal by dividing it by 100. So, 5% becomes 0.05.

Now you can divide 30 by 0.05 to find out how many third graders were surveyed.

30 / 0.05 = 600

Therefore, 600 third graders were surveyed to obtain the given percentages of pets.

So, your correct answer is indeed 600 students surveyed.