The ratio of males to females working in an office building is 5:3. Which of the following is the percent of females in the building?

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

When solving problems where you convert ratios/proportions to percentages, you first want to add the parts to get the whole. In this case, we have 5 parts male and 3 parts female. 3 + 5 = 8, so there are 8 total parts. Then we divide the part we are interested in by the total number of parts (the whole): ³/₈= 0.375 = 37.5% *Remember that the fraction line is a symbol for division. Therefore, when we see ³/_8,we know that it means 3 ÷ 8.

The Ratio of Males to Females Working in an Office