ratios, simper than you think...
In my experience ratios tend to worry you guys. They are in your first 109 workshop, so let me try to explain them....
So, a ratio is simply a comparison between two different things. Like girls to boys, or cats to dogs.
For example, you might have a yard of cats and dogs, there are 20 cats and 10 dogs. You might want to express this as the 'ratio of cats to dogs'. This ratio could be expressed as 20:10 which simply is the mathematical way of writing 20 cats to 10 dogs.
I think one of the confusing things about ratios is the fact that you can write them down in various different ways:
You could simplify your ratio of 20:10 down to 2:1 (i.e. for every 2 cats there is 1 dog)
Or, instead of the ':' symbol you could write 'to', i.e. 2 to 1
You could also write it as a fraction, 20/10 or 2/1
Or you could write it as a single number by doing 20 divided by 10 = 2
So, if you were given a question that said the ratio of snails to zebrafish is 12, that simply means that if you took the number of snails and divided them by the number of zebrafish (snails/zebrafish), the value you would get would be 12. Or, you could say that there are 12 times more snails than there are zebrafish.
So, a ratio is simply a comparison between two different things. Like girls to boys, or cats to dogs.
A ratio tells you how much of one thing there is compared to another thing.
For example, you might have a yard of cats and dogs, there are 20 cats and 10 dogs. You might want to express this as the 'ratio of cats to dogs'. This ratio could be expressed as 20:10 which simply is the mathematical way of writing 20 cats to 10 dogs.
(IMPORTANT, IF YOU ARE WRITING A RATIO OF CATS TO DOGS,
THE NUMBER OF CATS MUST COME FIRST!)
I think one of the confusing things about ratios is the fact that you can write them down in various different ways:
You could simplify your ratio of 20:10 down to 2:1 (i.e. for every 2 cats there is 1 dog)
Or, instead of the ':' symbol you could write 'to', i.e. 2 to 1
You could also write it as a fraction, 20/10 or 2/1
Or you could write it as a single number by doing 20 divided by 10 = 2
So, if you were given a question that said the ratio of snails to zebrafish is 12, that simply means that if you took the number of snails and divided them by the number of zebrafish (snails/zebrafish), the value you would get would be 12. Or, you could say that there are 12 times more snails than there are zebrafish.
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