The table shows the number of businesses and jobs within each economic sector of a particular city. Economic SectorNumber of...

Owning the Dataset

Let's start by understanding what we're working with. This table presents data about different economic sectors in a city, showing both business statistics and employment figures.

Key observations:

• The table shows both raw numbers and percentages for businesses and jobs by sector
• Services is clearly dominant, representing 37% of businesses and 32.2% of jobs
• Some sectors have disproportionate relationships between business count and job count
• Percentages in each column sum to 100%, confirming we have the complete economic picture

Looking at just one row helps us understand the relationships: Services has 2,040 businesses (37% of all businesses) and provides 19,502 jobs (32.2% of all jobs).

Let's analyze each statement strategically to maximize our efficiency.

Analyzing Statement 3

Statement 3 Translation:
Original: "There are two economic sectors that together comprise over half of all jobs in the city."
What we're looking for:

• The two sectors with the highest job percentages
• Whether these two percentages combined exceed 50%

In other words: Do the two biggest job-providing sectors together account for more than half of all jobs?

Let's sort the table by "% of jobs" in descending order to immediately see which sectors have the highest percentages.

After sorting, we can see:

• Services: 32.2% of jobs
• Retail trade: 19.6% of jobs

Let's add these percentages: \(32.2\% + 19.6\% = 51.8\%\)

Since \(51.8\% > 50\%\), we've confirmed that two sectors (Services and Retail trade) together comprise over half of all jobs in the city.

Statement 3 is YES.

Teaching note: Notice how sorting instantly revealed the top job sectors. We didn't need to scan the entire table or check multiple combinations - the answer became obvious after a simple sort.

Analyzing Statement 1

Statement 1 Translation:
Original: "The sector with the greatest number of businesses has the greatest number of jobs."
What we're looking for:

• Identify which sector has the most businesses
• Check if that same sector also has the most jobs

In other words: Does the sector with the highest business count also have the highest job count?

Let's sort by "% of businesses" in descending order to instantly see which sector dominates.

After sorting, Services appears at the top with 37% of businesses (or 2,040 businesses), clearly the highest.

Now we need to check if Services also has the most jobs. From our work on Statement 3, we already know Services has 32.2% of jobs, which was the highest percentage we saw.

Since Services has both the highest percentage of businesses AND the highest percentage of jobs, we can confirm this statement.

Statement 1 is YES.

Teaching note: We leveraged our previous sort from Statement 3 to inform our analysis here. This strategic order of solving allows insights from one statement to help with another.

Analyzing Statement 2

Statement 2 Translation:
Original: "The sector with the least number of businesses has the least number of jobs."
What we're looking for:

• Identify which sector has the fewest businesses
• Check if that same sector also has the fewest jobs

In other words: Does the sector with the lowest business count also have the lowest job count?

Let's sort by "Number of businesses" in ascending order to immediately see which sector has the fewest.

After sorting, Transportation appears at the bottom with 185 businesses, the lowest number.

Now we need to check if Transportation also has the fewest jobs. Reading across the row, we see Transportation has 2,346 jobs.

Let's sort by "Number of jobs" ascending to see which sector has the fewest jobs.

After sorting, we can see that Miscellaneous has the fewest jobs with 1,444 jobs.

Since the sector with the fewest businesses (Transportation with 185) is not the same as the sector with the fewest jobs (Miscellaneous with 1,444), this statement is false.

Statement 2 is NO.

Teaching note: When checking minimums or maximums, sorting is almost always faster than manual scanning. Here, two quick sorts gave us a definitive answer without having to check every sector individually.

Final Answer Compilation

After analyzing each statement:

• Statement 1: YES - Services has both the most businesses and the most jobs
• Statement 2: NO - Transportation has the fewest businesses, but Miscellaneous has the fewest jobs
• Statement 3: YES - Services (32.2%) and Retail trade (19.6%) together account for 51.8% of jobs, which exceeds 50%

Learning Summary

Skills We Used

• Strategic Sorting: We sorted the data in different ways to immediately reveal maximums and minimums
• Leveraging Previous Insights: Our analysis of Statement 3 helped us solve Statement 1 more efficiently
• Visual Verification: After sorting, we used visual scanning to confirm patterns rather than calculating every value

Strategic Insights

• Order Matters: We tackled Statement 3 first because sorting by job percentage would provide useful insights for the other statements
• Sorting Direction: We chose ascending or descending sorts based on whether we needed minimums or maximums
• Reading Across Rows: After sorting, we read horizontally across rows to find related values without re-sorting

Common Mistakes We Avoided

• We didn't manually scan the entire table multiple times looking for highest/lowest values
• We didn't check every sector unnecessarily once we found our answer
• We didn't perform calculations when simple comparisons would suffice

When facing any table analysis question, remember that sorting is your most powerful tool for quickly revealing patterns and extremes in the data.