Real-Life Math -- Solution
Let's work backwards. Each page has 24 lines and the book has
150 pages. How many lines do we have to work with?
24
lines per page x 150 pages = 3,600 lines
Now, how many
words is that?
3,600 lines x 9 words per line = 32,400
words
You have space for 32,400 words. How many words
will you actually have based on the average entry length?
2,350
entries x 45 words per entry = 105,750 words
You have
105,750 words total. That means you have too many words for the amount of
space available.
105,750 words needed - 32,400 words that
will fit = 73,350 words too many
You have 73,350 words
too many to fit on the 150 pages.
If you had a hard time coming up
with the answer, you may be off the hook. David Sanderson is a computational
grammarian. Sanderson says, quite frankly, that in his day-to-day
work, "math skills are not terribly important." More often, lexicographers
call upon their "language skills, ambition...encyclopedic interest and knowledge."