Estimating Distances

Approximation

(Time Duration) How long did you sit on the school bus on the ride from your school to UCI?

(Bus Speed) Roughly, what do you think is the average speed that your school bus is traveling at? On a highway, the speed limit is 65 miles per hour. Off highway, the speed can be between 20-25 miles/hr to 55 miles/hr.

Average Speed = (# of miles traveled) / (# of hours traveled)

If you multiply the average bus speed with the time you sat on the bus (in terms of hours) together, what do you get? Is it close to what you initially guessed? You can use this Google Sheet to do your computation.

Why should you multiply these two numbers together?

[Speed] x [Time] = [(# of miles) / (# of hours)] x [# of hours]

We can compare our answer with the distance provided by Google Map.