MathBench > Miscellaneous

Tricks with Division

More uses for Ratios

pound cakeOften ratios are used to compare a part of a mixture to another part of a mixture. For example, classic pound cake is made with

The ratio of any two ingredients in this cake (say, sugar:butter) is 1:1. On the other hand, a "lowfat" pound cake has

Now what is the ratio of sugar to butter?

What is the ratio of carb ingredients (sugar and flour) to fat ingredients (eggs and butter)?

Notice that I added some things up before doing the division. This is natural if I'm interested in categories of ingredients in the mixture.

In case you're missing the connections to biology here:

We'll get to some of these lovely examples later in the module.