How to use ratios (and ratio tables) to solve a proportion. Sample problem here.

What is the ratio of greens to reds?

There are an infinite number of ratios that would correctly answer this question.

The table to the right shows some of them.

• How are the two columns related to each other?
• If there are 10 green tiles, how many reds would there be?

 You should see at least three relationships in this table:

Horizontal: Each value in the "green" column is multiplied by a constant to get the corresponding value in the "red" column.	Vertical: If the "green" value is multiplied by a number, then the "red" number is multiplied by the same number.		Addition: If two numbers in the "green" column are added together, then the corresponding "red" numbers also are added together.
All three tables show that there will be 30 reds if there are 10 greens.

Example 1

Use these three relationships to build a table that will answer this question:

A person who weighs 160 pounds on earth will weigh 416 pounds on Jupiter. If a person weighs 120 pounds on earth, how much would he weigh on Jupiter?

Earth Jupiter What was done 160 416   40 104 divided by 4 120 312 multiplied by 3 A person who weighs 120 pounds on Earth would weigh 312 pounds on Jupiter.

 Example 2

Self-Check