Expert: Abe Mantell - 6/11/2009

Question
Abe-
Hope all is well. My question will probally take you about 30 seconds to figure out. It is not class room related, just more of a sanity check for myself. I was watching the yankees game last night, and the announcers commented on Derek Jeter's fielding, and how he had only made 2 errors thus far, and had a fielding percentage of .991. I was trying to figure out how many balls were hit his way. I set up the equation as follows; x-2/x=.991, where x=total number of attempts. Is that correct? If so, how do you go about solving for x. Thanks.

Answer
Hello Rob,

You have the right idea!  We just need parentheses: (x-2)/x=0.991
Now multiply by x on both sides: x-2=0.991x
Subtract 0.991x from both sides: 0.009x-2=0
Now add 2 to both sides: 0.009x=2
Now divide by 0.009 on both sides: x=2/0.009 which is about 222

OK?

Abe