Find the number of foreign ships that were inspected in 1967, then take 12 percent of that amount. Foreign ships are represented by the shaded bars; the 1967 shaded bar is somewhere between 7 and 8 thousand. Let's say a little less than 8 thousand, and see where that gets us. The answer choices aren't widely spread, but they're not too close together either. Approximately what is 12 percent of 8 thousand?

$$
\(\frac{12}{100} \times 8000=12 \times 80=960\)
$$


So the answer must be a bit less than 960 . Choice 3 is the only possibility here.

You may have approximated even more here, saying that 12 percent of 8 thousand is a little more than 10 percent of 8 thousand, or a little more than 800 . The only problem with that is that 8 thousand was a little too high initially; the actual value is a little less than 8 thousand. So what you would be looking for is something a little more than 10 percent of something a little less than 8 thousand. It's getting pretty confusing at this point already; plus, if you figure that the little more and the little less cancel each other out, you could end up with 800 as your answer. In which case you would be wrong. The problem here is that the choices are spread far enough apart for us to do some rounding and estimation, but they're too close together for us to do a lot of estimation.