Country A has a population of 1000. Ten percent of the inhabitants drink one liter of beer each day.
Country B has a population of 200 inhabitants. Ten per cent of its inhabitants drink one liter of beer a day.
Which country consumes the most beer?
Is this some kind of trick question?
Country A -> 10% of 1000 = 100L/day
Country B -> 10% of 200 = 20L/day
Am I missing something?
Yes they consume the most per capita. Nearly twice the amount of per capita consumption in the USA. But the USA actually consumes more than 12 times the amount of beer.
I suspect this is a trick question, but regardless, there’s not enough information given. How much beer do the other 90% of the population of each country drink? Perhaps 90% of country A drink no beer, while 90% of country B drink two litres each per day.
No I don’t believe so. Country A then is the larger consumer of beer, correct? So simple a third year student would and should reach the same conclusion.
If that’s all there is to the question, yes. Anyone with a basic understanding of the concept of “percent” should be able to easily reach that conclusion.
Let me clarify. Only the 10% mentioned in each country are consumers. They drink only one beer each day.
Fine – in that case country A consumes more beer.
I’m curious as to the point of this little exercise. I’m guessing you didn’t really need us to figure that out for you.
Someone claimed that an equal number of per capita consumers in 2 places of largely disproportionate populations meant there were equal levels of total consumption.
I’m betting that you misread a question somewhere, and the original question doesn’t have them drinking identical amounts of beer.
Tell this person he/she needs to look up the definition of “per capita.”
Permit me another equation, a bit more complicated but a matter of simple math regardless.
Region A has a population of 500. It consumes 44% of product x sold in the world.
Region B has a population of 800. It consumes 33% of product x sold worldwide.
Which region consumes more of product x?
Which region has a higher per capita rate of consumption?
Region A.
Let’s say there’s 100,000 of product x in the world.
Per capita consumption of A = 88 (44,000/500)
Per capita consumption of B = 41.25 (33,000/800)
Region A consumes over twice as much per capita as Region B.
Region A. They consume 4 units for every 3 units consumed by Region B.
Region A. It has a lower population, and consumes a greater proportion of the worldwide supply of the product.
If the worldwide production of X were 100 units, then Region A consumes 44 units. 44/500 = a per capita consumption of 0.088 units. Region B thus consumes 33 units. 33/800 = per capita consumption of 0.04125 units.
Are we doing your damned econ homework for you??
Jajaja I wish I was still young and had homework.
I just wanted to substantiate that this is something that even with this new equation any 6 or 7 year student should be able to handle. It is amazing though that some adults have problems with something so straightforward.
They consume an equal amount of beer per day. Though I don’t know how country A is able to get 100 people to share one liter of beer.
The wording you are using does not make sense. There is no such thing as “an equal number of per-capita consumers”.
Tell your friend that per-capita just means per-person. On average, each person consumes x. Multiply x by the total population to get total consumption.
You need to get smarter friends.
First, this is not a friend.
Second, English is my second language so perhaps my wording is doesn’t make sense.
But I don’t know if I could explain it any better so feel free to ignore the question.