Somewhere yesterday I hard that 1 out of 2 Mexicans have family members working in the US.

First, this statistic doesn't really tell us much. But, Squeaky, it is not your math skills that are limiting but your analysis and use of the tools you ere taught.

Population: 107,449,525

Let's see 107, 449, 525 divided by two equals 53,724,62.

Why are you dividing by Two?

If 53,724,62 had, let's conservatively say, 2 of their family members working in the US that would equal the whole population of Mexico working in the US.

You now just undid what you previously had done? Why? That made absolutely no sense at all.

Did you go to public schools too? ;)

All right, what should we have done. Family members? Define family members. Actually, if you think about this intuitively and the idea of six degrees of separation, you can see that that the statement that 1 out of 2 Mexicans have family members working in the US is true yet meaningless if we are liberal with the definition of family members and count most everyone in the world as members of the same family (Actually, not that absurd when you consider that most of us share common ancestors that go back less than 10 generations in our family tree and all of us do going back 50 generations).

But if you define family members an immediate family including husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, Aunts and Uncles, Grandparents, and first cousins and Nieces and Nephews and you consider the average nuclear family size (lets say 5), Mathematically, each person would have this many possible family members.

Wife - 1
children - 3
grandchildren - 9
parents - 2
grandparents - 4
Aunts and Uncles - 4
Cousins - 12

That is a conservative figure for 35 family members. I am not sure of the Mexican average nuclear family, but the family members I include is a small list.

I have a relatively small family, but, still, at family reunions we are at least 30 strong when all the aunts, uncles, cousins, grand kids, etc., are present.

The claim is 1 in 2, so Mexican pop ~= 100 mill and 100mill x 1/2 = 50mill.

Using my small family size of 30:

50mill / 30=1,666,666 family members working in the US.

Or, said another way, it would only take 1,666,666 Mexicans to be working here in the US for the claim that 1 in 2 Mexicans have family members working here to be true.