Question

Voting in Clarksville's annual school board elections has been going down by 5% from one election to the next. If 530 parents voted this year, how many will vote 3 years from now?

Answer 1

This problem is a decay function in the form :

$y=A(1-r)^t$

where A = initial population

y = population after t years

r = rate of decay

t = time in years

From the problem, the initial population is A = 530.

The rate of decay is r = 5% or 0.05 and the time is t = 3 years

Using the formula above :

$\begin{gathered} y=530(1-0.05)^3 \\ y=454.4 \end{gathered}$

ANSWER :

About 454 parents will vote 3 years from now.