When the residents of Nome, Alaska needed medical help, Balto the sled dog came through for them. When kids need elementary math help, or when students need help with math for middle school, Mathnasium is ready to step in with math tutoring classes or fun word problems like this one, to help kids improve math skills!
Dust off your elementary school math skills such as addition and subtraction and give this word problem challenge a try. Help figure out how long it took to put up a statue of Balto, the heroic sled dog. Read the problem below and take your time working it out.
Question: In New York City’s Central Park, there is a statue of Balto, the sled dog who helped deliver medicine in the middle of a blizzard to Nome, Alaska and saved the town from a dangerous diphtheria outbreak. Balto arrived in Nome on February 2, 1925. The statue of Balto was erected on December 17, 1925. How many days passed between Balto arriving in Nome and his statue being erected? (Hint: 1925 was not a leap year.)
When you're ready, look below to check your solution against ours.
Solution: Since we’re looking for the number of days between those two dates, we will not include those days in our answer. After February 2, there are 28 – 2 = 26 more days in February. Adding the days in March through November gets us 26 + 31 + 30 + 31 + 30 + 31 + 31 + 30 + 31 + 30 = 301 days. Adding the first 16 days of December brings our total up to 317 days.
(Image above found on Wikimedia Commons.)