Reporting with Numbers
Please refer to the “Math for Journalists” section in Inside Reporting (Ch. 4, p. 84-85) for the information you will need to complete these exercises. You’ll need to review the segments on calculating percentages and figuring the mean and median (p. 84), as well as the “idea file” bullet points (p. 85) on how to present numbers.


1 - $80 million is 60 percent of the budget
- $6 million is 5 percent of the budget
- 34 million is 28.3 percent of the budget

Local college revenue for the budget comes mostly from the state; two-thirds of the total budget, grants and gifts; just below one-third the budget, and the remaining from student tuition; 5 percent.

2)

Name
Sentence
Donald Lee
1 year prison, 2 years probation
Richard Smith
1 year prison, 1 year probation
Wesley Mitchell
14 months prison, 1 year probation
Mary Jones
1 year prison, 1 year probation
Juan Rodriguez
1 year prison, 2 years probation
Harold Rothstein
8 months prison, 1 year probation
Michael Reese
7 years prison, 5 years probation

154 months of time spent has an average of 22 months.
Months of convicts- 8, 12, 12, 12, 12, 14, 84…12 months is the median.

The median figure is the most useful in this chart because one of the prison sentences, Michael Reese, is considerably higher then the rest of the sentences. Using the average would be eschewed by the 84 month sentence when the sentence closest to it is 14 months.

3)
State sales tax is 7.25%
$5 spent would be $.36
$75.40 a year in savings