📝 Practice Worksheets
🛠️ Related Tools
🔑 Key Concepts
- A proportion shows that two ratios are equivalent.
- Word problems often compare a small group to a larger group using the same ratio.
- Set up the ratio labels in the same order on both sides of the proportion.
- Equivalent ratios can be found by multiplying both parts of the ratio by the same number.
- Cross multiplication can also be used to solve for the missing value.
💡 Main Idea
To solve a proportion word problem, match the quantities in the same order, set up equivalent ratios, and solve for the missing value. If one ratio can be scaled easily, multiplying both parts by the same number is often the fastest method.
✏️ Worked Examples
🧠 Math Vocabulary
- Ratio: a comparison of two quantities.
- Proportion: an equation showing that two ratios are equivalent.
- Equivalent Ratios: ratios that have the same value.
- Scale Factor: the number used to multiply both parts of a ratio to create an equivalent ratio.
- Cross Products: the products found by multiplying diagonally in a proportion.
📚 What You Should Already Know
Students should already know how to write ratios, create equivalent ratios, multiply and divide whole numbers, and understand that a proportion compares two equivalent ratios.
🚀 What Comes Next
After solving proportion word problems, students can apply proportional reasoning to percent problems, scale drawings, similar figures, unit rates, and real-world proportional relationships.
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