1. **State the problem:** We are given the means and mean absolute deviations (MADs) of two data sets representing potato weights from Mrs. Dimson and Mrs. Brown. 2. **Given data:** - Mean of Mrs. Dimson's potatoes: $7.8$ - MAD of Mrs. Dimson's potatoes: $2.0$ - Mean of Mrs. Brown's potatoes: $12.9$ - MAD of Mrs. Brown's potatoes: $2.3$ 3. **Find the difference between the means:** $$\text{Difference} = 12.9 - 7.8 = 5.1$$ 4. **Compare the difference to the MADs:** We want to express the difference in terms of MADs. Since the MADs are different, we can use an average MAD or compare to one MAD. Here, we compare to Mrs. Dimson's MAD of $2.0$ for simplicity. 5. **Calculate how many MADs the difference represents:** $$\frac{5.1}{2.0} = 2.55$$ 6. **Interpretation:** The difference between the means is about $2.5$ MADs, which is closest to "about 3 MADs" among the answer choices. **Final answer:** The difference between the means is about 3 MADs.