Real-Life Math
Dengue fever is a viral disease found in tropical countries. It causes acute pain in the joints. Dengue is a mosquito-borne disease.
As a virologist, you are interested in the virus-causing dengue fever. You want to study its effects on people.
"We go into statistics quite extensively," says Merritt Nelson, a virologist in Arizona. "Depending on your area of study, the amount of math you use can vary. You will always use quite a bit for things such as bioinformatics and computer analysis."
These are the statistics you have about dengue fever:
Last year 500,000 people around the world were hospitalized with the illness. Amazingly, 90 percent of these people were under the age of 15. The average mortality rate for the disease is 5 percent.
1. How many of the 500,000 hospitalized people were children under the age of 15?
2. How many of the 500,000 people died as a result of having dengue fever?