Question

For every 5 boys on a softball team there is 1 girl. What is the ratio of boys to girls?

Answer 1

Hint: This is a question of ratio and proportion. Generally, ratio tells us about how many times a quantity is related to another. Here we have to tell the number of times the boys present in a team as compared to girls.

Complete step-by-step solution:
A ratio is a comparison of two or more numbers that indicates their quantities in relation to each other. A ratio of two different quantities is represented by using a dividend sign (:) between two numbers.
For instance,
If one were to represent the comparison between the number of boys and girls in a class, it can be done in the form of $30$ : $45$ as a ratio of boys to girls indicating the ratio of boys to girls in our hypothetical classroom is $2$ : $3$.
Similarly in this question,
For every $5$ boys there is $1$ girl which means that the ratio of boys to girls in the softball team is $5$ to $1$.
We can represent it as $5\,$: $1$ .
Therefore, the ratio of boys to girls is $5\,$: $1$ .

Note: There are some basic properties of ratio. A ratio remains the same if both antecedent and consequent are multiplied or divided by the same non-zero number. Also, while comparing the two different quantities a and b, a dividend symbol can be used to denote the ratio like a:b or $\dfrac{a}{b}$ .