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King's Maths School

Challenge 421: Lies and statistics

Can you find the flaw in these statistics?

I recently gave all Year 12 students a test, and asked my assistant, Dr Bondle, to analyse the results.

He told me he had done the analysis, and made the following claim:

"Of all the marks earned by students, 27% of them were earned by the 20 lowest-scoring students, while 44% were earned by the 32 highest-scoring students."

How did I know that Dr Bondle hadn't done the analysis properly?

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