Question

how many school buses will fit a thousand people if the school bus seats 72

Answer 1

For problems like these, we use something called a ceiling function, in which $\lceil{x}\rceil = \text{the smallest integer that is greater than or equal to x}$. If we do $\lceil1000 / 72\rceil$, we get that we do $\lceil13.888...\rceil$, which is 14 buses. We take the ceiling of the division because if we don't, we know that there are going to be extra kids left over that won't be able to seat on a bus. If we just rounded down to 13 buses, we would have been able to seat only 936 kids, a full 64 kids left over.

Answer 2

Here, we need to set up a proportion.

72/1 = 1000/x

Cross multiply

72*x = 1000*1
72x = 1000

72x/72 = 1000/72    Divide 72 by both sides.
1000/72 = x
x= 14

So, to seat 1000 people, you need 14 buses. 

Final answer: 14 buses