A toy store received a shipment of 17 cases of teddy bears. Use compatible numbers to estimate the total number of teddy bears in the shipment. How many bears are in the shipment?

204 bears.

Step-by-step explanation:

In this problem, there are 12 bears per case. So, if the toy store received a shipment of 17 cases of teddy bears, how many bears are in the shipment?

To solve this we just have to multiply 12 (17), because there are 12 bears per case, and there are 17 cases. So, 12 (17) = 204. Therefore, there are 204 bears in total.

However, using compatible number means to estimate the operation using easier number that can be calculated with the mind, without using calculators or any other procedure. So, in this case we could separate the factor 12 into 10 + 2, this way will be easier, because 17 (10) = 170 (just adding the zero), then we just duplicate 17, 2 (17) = 34. Lastly, we just sum these two result and obtain 204.

So, using compatible numbers we just separate 12 into 10 + 2, and operate each term with the other factor.

68, assuming that there are four bears packed into each case.

Step-by-step explanation:

Assuming that "compatible" means "reasonable" here, and that we assume that each case holds four teddy bears, then the total number of bears in the shipment is (17 cases) (4 bears per case) = 68 bears