Mary solved this problem. robert bought 5 packages of rubber bands. he paid $0.69 for each package. how much did robert pay for the rubber bands? mary thought the answer was $345. is mary's answer reasonable? a. yes, mary's answer is reasonable. b. no, mary's answer should be closer to $34. c. no, mary's answer should be closer to $0.34. d. no, mary's answer should be closer to $3.40

the answer   is 200

step-by-step explanation:

this is a problem about poisson probabilities.   i don't know if you've

already studied poisson distributions, or if you have a place to look

to read more about the subject.  

here's how you can see a poisson distribution coming.   when there are

a lot of events that may happen at any time (or any place), and when

you're counting how many of them happen at a particular time (or a

particular place), and each event is independent of the others, then

the result is a poisson distribution.   this is roughly true for the

chocolate chips; one chip being in a cookie has only a small effect on

the probability that another chip will be in the cookie.

once you know you have a poisson distribution, you know a lot.   there

is only one parameter to a poisson distribution, so if you know the

mean, you know everything.   the form of the distribution is

  probability of n chips = {[e^(-x)]*(x^n)} / (n! )

120 seems like the most sensible answer.

step-by-step explanation:

if there is only one topping on all caramel apples and there's 120 of them. then all apples should/will be covered in sprinkles. make sense?