Ratios

The objective of this lesson is to show you how to write ratios using some situations or examples you encounter daily.

Things are not always the same size. Thus, a natural need arise to compare quantities using division to see how much bigger a quantity is when compared to another.

For example, looking at the two piles above made of red apples and green apples, you may not be satisfied just to know that there are more red apples.

A comparison of red apples to green apples using division may help you to see how much more red apples there are.

There are 9 red apples and 3 green apples. We can do a ratio of red apples to green apples as shown below:


The quotient or answer to the ratio above is equal to 3 and we can quite interpret the answer.

It means that there are 3 times more red apples than green apples.

Other real-life examples of ratios

Say for instance, you are in a classroom. In the classroom, there are 3 boys and 6 girls.


It means that there are half as many boys as girls in the classroom.



You can also do the following ratios:





At this point you may have noticed that the order is important when defining a ratio. The number that comes after ' of ' is your numerator and the number that comes after ' to ' is your denominator.

Some formal definitions of ratios

A ratio is a comparison of two numbers using division.


A ratio is an ordered pair of numbers, written a:b, with b ≠ 0

As you can see there are more than one way to express a ratio. For example, if you have 6 pencils and 2 pens all the followings are good ways to express the ratio of pens to pencils.

2:6


The word "per" also means a ratio

Continued ratio

The ratio of three or more quantities is called continued ratio.

The ratio of 4 to 8 to 12 is the continued ratio 4:8:12

We get the continued ratio above by combining 3 ratios.

4:8, 8:12, and 4:12

When doing ratios, make sure that quantities are in the same units first.

Ratio of 24 inches to 6 feet

Since 1 foot = 12 inches, 6 feet = 6 × 12 inches = 72 inches.

Now, you can do the ratio of 24 inches to 72 inches.


It may be useful to simplify a ratio sometimes such as the one immediately above.

Just divide both numerator and the denominator by the greatest common factor.



A little word problem: A classroom has 50 students and the ratio of males to females is 2 to 3. How many students are females?

2 to 3 is the same thing as 20 to 30

20 + 30 = 50

Therefore, there are 30 females in this class.

Ratios quiz

Take the quiz below to see how well you understand the lesson on this page.