Making Relations

Mother’s Day 2020

Question: Can you predict how many Mother’s Day card will be purchased in the United States this year for Mother’s Day?

Make a guess. Can you give a range for what this number could be? For instance, what could be a maximum number of cards sold?


Let’s build some relations and break up the problem into smaller pieces.

  • Number of Mothers in the United States: What fraction of US population is female? What fraction of all US women are mothers?
  • Fraction of mothers receiving a Mother’s Day Card
  • Average number of cards a mother will receive
  • Fraction of cards that are purchased (instead of self-made).

Make you best guesses. Can you put all this information together to come up with a prediction for the number of Mother’s Day card sold?