Student Worksheet
| Name:____________________ | Date:____________________ |
FOREST FIRE MATH
The following list shows the different causes of forest fires in New Jersey. The number of times out of every 100 fires that each cause is responsible for starting a fire is also shown. For example, out of every 100 fires, 12 are caused by smoking.
| Number of fires | Cause of fires | percentage of total forest fires |
| 53 | arson | |
| 15 | children's accidents | |
| 12 | smoking | |
| 9 | miscellaneous | |
| 4 | campfire | |
| 3 | equipment use and failure | |
| 2 | debris burning | |
| 1 | railroad | |
| 1 | lightening |
Activities:
1. Convert the number of fires in each of the above categories to the percent of total forest fires that the cause represents and write that number in the "percentage of total forest fires" column in the table above.
2. Using graph paper, create a bar or a line graph that shows the percent of each of the causes of forest fires in New Jersey. Place the causes of fire on the x-axis (horizontal) and the percentage of each type of fire on the y-axis (vertical). Clearly labels each axis and provide a title for your graph. As an alternative, you may chose to create a circle graph (pie chart). Represent the percent of each cause of fire as an area of the circle (remember that one quarter of the circle equals 25%). Provide a title for the graph as well as a color or symbol key that identifies each fire cause.
Challenge activity:
In 1985, there were 1,830 forest fires in New Jersey. Using the percentages you calculated above for the causes of forest fires, calculate the number of fires stared out of the 1985 total by each cause and write them in a new table.
(Information for the above activities was taken, in part, from the New Jersey Department of environmental Protection's "Forest Fire Prevention, Forest Management Awareness and Activity Package".)