Asked by julie

Consider the following graph, which details one bookstore’s sales over the course of one day, divided by genre.
A graph titled Book Sales by Genre has genre on the x-axis and Number sold on the y-axis. Romance, 52; horror, 55; Fantasy, 60; Biograph, 57; Humor, 58; Cookbook, 54.
By percent, how much greater do sales of horror books appear to be than sales of cookbooks? How much greater are they in reality?
a.
There appear to be 50% more sales of horror books than cookbooks, but there are really only about 20% more.
b.
There appear to be 40% more sales of horror books than cookbooks, but there are really only about 5% more.
c.
There appear to be 20% more sales of horror books than cookbooks, but there are really only about 10% more.
d.
There appear to be 25% more sales of horror books than cookbooks, but there are really only about 2% more.

All Answers 1

Answered by GPT-5 mini AI
Answer: d.

If the graph’s vertical axis starts at 50, the bars show cookbook = 54 (4 units above baseline) and horror = 55 (5 units above baseline), so horror appears to be 1/4 = 25% higher. In reality the percent difference is (55−54)/54 = 1/54 ≈ 0.0185 ≈ 1.85% ≈ 2%.