We just take the average as usual, by adding the numbers in each month up and dividing by the total number of months, which will be

(900 + 1200 + 600 + 1050) / 4
= 3750 / 4
= 937.5

Yes, a decimal is okay in this case.

For the second part, the “0 visitor” information is counted as part of the 6-month block, so the new average will be

(900 + 1200 + 600 + 1050 + 0 + 600) / 6
= 4350 / 6
= 725

Hi, why is it 600 and not 1200 for month of jun?

I got the same answer for (a) but tot people cannot have decimal so puzzled over the answer.

Oh so sorry, I mistyped 1200 as 600.

Correct for part 2 would be 4950 / 6 = 825.

Thank you v much

In fact, such numbers exists.

Decimals are okay when we talk about average in such cases, because average just serves to provide an indicator of a value and is not fully representative of the actual value.

There has been a case as “34.2 beds per 100000 people”.

https://www.google.com.sg/amp/s/www.statista.com/chart/amp/21105/number-of-critical-care-beds-per-100000-inhabitants/

This does not mean that one of the 35 beds is cut into five parts. It is just a value expressed in terms which can be compared more meaningfully. By this “meaningfully”, I mean that when a person scores 22/25 for a test and 31/100 for an exam, we do not say that the person scores better for the exam than the test, even though technically 31 marks is more than 22 marks. It is because we put the 31 marks and 22 marks in the proper context that we can say that the 31 marks out of 100 (31 percent) is actually a worse result than a 22 marks out of 25 (88 percent)

In the beds scenario, the figure of 34.2 simply indicates that per 100000 beds, there are 34.2 beds placed in the intensive care. We do not know how many beds there are - it could be 171 beds out of 500000 beds, or 342 beds out of 1000000 beds, or even more. And other Hospitals May have different number of beds, so the numbers are expressed in common terms like 100000 beds (as we did for the other scenario above, in percentage terms) for more accurate comparisons.

Even in 2019, the O Level pass rates for at least 5 subjects, released in January this year, was a high 85.2%.

This does not mean that 100 students took the O Levels and “85.2” students passed at least 5 subjects.

In actual fact, 20805 out of 24409 candidates passed at least 5 subjects. It’s pretty common for percentages to be expressed in decimals.

Oh wow.. Thanks for the insightful explanation. Grateful for your help!