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Here’s your shmoop du jour: The ratio of boys to girls at the local middle
school is 3 to 4. If there are 245 students at the school, how
many girls are there? And here are the potential answers…
So obviously this is a GREAT school to attend if you’re a boy who likes going out Saturday
nights.
It’s a simple ratio problem. The problem tells us that the boys to girls ratio is:
3x boys and 4x girls. Meaning… there are more girls than boys...
It also gives the TOTAL number of students, which is 245.
There’s a simple ratio here. 4 out of 7 students are girls.
So the ratio is “4 is to 7 as x is to 245.”
To get the answer, we cross multiply to get 7x equals 4 times 245…
…or 7x equals 980.
To solve for x… which is the number of boys in the school… we divide both sides by 7
to get x = 140.
The answer is E.
As in, “Edwina.”