All right so this question asks me to find out how many shares of common stock are outstanding... What I don't understand is how would I go about calculating this.

Outstanding stock is the amount of issued stock less what the company is holding. And treasury stock is what the company is holding. i.e. the company purchased their own shares and pulled them off the public market. They are still issued because they still exist, but they aren't "outstanding."

So according to your chart…the outstanding shares would be:

6,000 shares from the $2 pref

47,000 shares from Common Stock (53,000 total, - 6,000 that you have bought back)

So that would be 53,000 in total outstanding.

So that would be 53,000 in total outstanding.

Pst, that was issued. Did you miss your morning coffee? :-)