help me to understand the meaning of that problem-statement?

Question

here i have uploaded a table

http://img512.imageshack.us/my.php?image=scan0002pl2.jpg

i dont understand the meaning of the problem statement

"Each university is represented by three of its best colleges".

what it means in this context ?

does it mean universirt1 has 3 colleges . university2 and others also have 3 collges ....then there should have 3x5 = 15 colleges !!

I think i am understanding it wrongly.

someone please help me to understand the meaning of that problem-statement

Answer 1

Yes, you are right, there were 15 colleges competing (5 Universities, each of which had 3 colleges competing). But, there were only 18 medals (Gold, Silver or Bronze) won by the colleges. The second table only shows the medals won by the colleges and omits the colleges that didn't receive a medal. So, 9 colleges won the 18 medals. Does this help?

Answer 2

The basic thing you need to understand is that every university has different colleges (college of medicine,college of nursing,college of dentistry,etc. for examples). An institution which is not yet ugraded as a University is called a College which has different departments. So in short the colleges (comprising the university) are equivalent to the departments comprising the College.

In your problem statement, there are 5 universities participating, representatives from each university are from three of its colleges. The table shows the number of medals won by different colleges (those who did not win any medal are not listed on the table). The other table shows the total medals won by every university-that would be by making total tally marks of any medals won by any of their three colleges.