About this video
A ratio shows the relationship between the quantities of two different things. Using 6 apples and 9 oranges, the video writes the ratio as 6 to 9 (or 6:9), reduces it to 2:3 by dividing both numbers by 3, and shows that the ratio of oranges to apples swaps the order to 9:6, or 3:2.
You'll be able to
- write a ratio comparing two quantities in the right order.
- reduce a ratio by dividing both numbers by a common factor.
- explain what a ratio like 2:3 means in words (for every 2 of these, there are 3 of those).
- reverse a ratio when the order of the two things is swapped.
Key words
- ratio
- A way of comparing the quantities of two different things, like 6 apples to 9 oranges.
- reduce (a ratio)
- Divide both numbers in a ratio by the same number to get smaller numbers that show the same relationship.
- 6:9 notation
- Writing a ratio with a colon between the numbers; you still read it as '6 to 9'.
Transcript
Voiceover:We've got some apples here and we've got some oranges and what I want to think about is, what is the ratio, what is the ratio of apples ... Of apples, to oranges? To oranges. To clarify what we're even talking about, a ratio is giving us the relationship between quantities of 2 different things.
So there's a couple of ways that we can specify this. We can literally count the number of apples. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. So we have 6 apples. And we can say the ratio is going to be 6 to, 6 to ... And then how many oranges do we have? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. It is 6 to 9.
The ratio of apples to oranges is 6 to 9. And you could use a different notation. You could also write it this way. 6 to ... You would still read the ratio as being 6 to 9. But we don't have to just satisfy us with this because one way to think about ratios, especially if we're thinking about apples to oranges, is how many apples do we have for a certain number of oranges?
When you think about it that way, we can actually reduce these numbers, as you might have already thought about. Both 6 and 9 are divisible by 3. So just like we can reduce fractions, we can also reduce ratios. So if you divide 6 and 9 both by 3. 6 divided by 3 is 2.
6 divided by 3 is 2. And 9 divided by 3 is 3. So we could also say that the ratio of apples to oranges is 2 to 3. Or if we want to use this notation, 2 to 3. 2 to 3. Now, does that make sense? Well look. We divided each of these groups into 3. So one way to think about it ...
If you divide this whole total into 3 groups. So 1 group, 1 group. 2 groups, 2 groups. And 3 equal groups. We see that in each of those groups, for every 2 apples, for every 2 apples, we have 3 oranges. For 2 apples we have 3 oranges. For 2 apples we have 3 oranges.
So, once again, the ratio of apples to oranges. For every 2 apples we have 3 oranges. But we could think about things the other way around as well. We could also think about what is the ratio ... We could also think about what is the ratio ... Ratio, of oranges to apples?
Oranges to apples. And here we would, essentially, switch the numbers. The ratio of oranges to apples. Notice, up here we said apples to oranges which is 6 to 9 or 2 to 3 if we reduce them. And here we're going to say the ratio of oranges to apples, so we've swapped these 2.
So we're going to swap the numbers. Here we have 9 oranges for every 6 apples. So we could say the ratio is going to be 9 to 6. The ratio is 9 to 6. Or if we want to reduce it, for every 3 oranges ... So we're going to divide this by 3. So for every 3 oranges we are going to have 2 apples.
We are going to have 2 apples. So notice, this is just exactly what we had up here, but when we had apples to oranges it was 6 to 9. 6 apples for every 9 oranges. And now when it's oranges to apples, we say it's 9 to 6. 9 oranges for every 6 apples. Or we could say for every 3 oranges we have exactly 2 apples.
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