Question

The ages of ten students of a group are given below. The ages have been recorded in years and months: $8 - 6,{\text{ }}9 - 0,{\text{ }}8 - 4,{\text{ }}9 - 3,{\text{ }}7 - 8,{\text{ }}8 - 11,{\text{ }}8 - 7,{\text{ }}9 - 2,{\text{ }}7 - 10,{\text{ }}8 - 8$, What is the highest age?

Answer 1

In this question we write the ages in terms of years and months and then check which age is the highest among all the ages.

Complete step-by-step solution:
From the given data, the following table could be made:

Students	Age
Student $1$	$8$ years $6$ months
Student $2$	$9$ years $0$ months
Student $3$	$8$ years $4$ months
Student $4$	$9$ years $3$ months
Student $5$	$7$ years $8$ months
Student $6$	$8$ years $11$ months
Student $7$	$8$ years $7$ months
Student $8$	$9$ years $2\;$months
Student $9$	$7$ years $10$ months
Student $10$	$8$ years $8$ months

First we have to check all the rows in the table to see which student has the highest age.
Since the highest number in terms of year is $9$ years which student $2$, student $4$ and student $8$ have.
Therefore, all the other students except Student $2$, Student $4$ and Student $8$ are exempted from the comparison.
Now we compare the highest number in terms of months of the $3$ students i.e. Student $2$, Student $4$ and Student $8$.
From the table, we see that Student $4$ has the highest number of months which is $3$ month in comparison to Student $2$ and student $8$ therefore he has the highest age among all the students therefore the eldest of all the $10$ students is student $4$.

$\therefore$ The highest age is $9 - 3$ which is $9$ years and $3$ months which is the age of Student $4$.

Note: The first number represents the year and the second number which is after the – (dash) represents the month.
During comparison the first number should be checked and the highest number should be selected. After the $1^{st}$ number is selected, the $2^{nd}$ number should be selected such that it is the highest.