Word Problem Wednesday: Just Your Average Chocolate Chip Cookie Math

Who doesn’t love chocolate chip cookies? And the more chocolate chips the better, right? This week’s word problem challenge uses cookies to illustrate the math concept of average. Because let’s face it, any kind of cookie is a delicious kids’ math learning practice!

Take a look at the question below, then use your elementary math skills such as addition and division to help Betsy figure out the average number of chocolate chips in the cookies she bought from the store. Take your time, and when you're ready, look below the question to check your solution with ours.

Question: Betsy buys 6 cookies from the store. The cookies have 5, 9, 10, 6, 7, and 11 chocolate chips in them, respectively. What is the average number of chocolate chips per cookie? (Hint: The average is the sum of all the values in a set, divided by the number of values in the set.)

Solution: To find an average, we add up all the values in a set and then divide by the number of values. So, since there are 5 + 9 + 10 + 6 + 7 + 11 = 48 chocolate chips among 6 cookies, that means that the average is 48 ÷ 6 = 8 chocolate chips per cookie.