SAT MATH

LESSON 1
• Ratios, rates, and proportions
• Percent
• Units
 What is a ratio
• A ratio is a comparison of two things.
• We might compare men to women, cars to trucks or hours
asleep to hour awake
• Whatever we choose to compare can then be written as a
ratio.
• There are three different forms
– a to b
– a:b
– a
b
 EXPLANATION
• 4 men and 5 women would be written 4 to 5,
4:5, 4
5
• 3 parts yellow and 4 parts blue would be
written as 3 to 4, 3:4 or 3
4
• Ratios can be:
– Part to part (Men to Woman)
– Part to whole (Men to population)
– Whole to part (Population to men)
 EXAMPLE
• A painter is mixing colors toget the right shade
of green. He has used 4 parts blue for every 5
parts yellow.

• Part to Part (Yellow to blue) 4:5

• Part to Whole (Yellow to whole) 5:9
• Whole to Part (Whole to Yellow) 9:5
 EXAMPLE
1. The ratio of goldfish to gallons of water is 9 to 4.
a. For every _____ goldfish, there are _____ gallons of water.
b. Fill in the table.
c. How many goldfish can you get if you have 12 gallons of water?
d. How many gallons of water do you need to keep 36 fish?

Fish Gallons of Water

9 4
18 8
27 12
36 16
45 20
54 24
 EXAMPLE
• A backyard pond has 12 sunfish and 30 rainbow shiners. Write
the ratio of sunfish to rainbow shiners in simplest form.
• Ms. Ekpebe's class has 32 students, of which 20 are girls.
Write the ratio of girls to boys.
• A recipe calls for butter and sugar in the ratio 2:3 . If you're
using 6 cups of butter, how many cups of sugar should you
use?
• A special cereal mixture contains rice, wheat and corn in the
ratio of 2:3:5. If a bag of the mixture contains 3 pounds of
rice, how much corn does it contain?
 What are rates
• Is a comparison where the second value is 1.
This could be miles driven per hour(One
hour), cost of an apple, the words someone
can type in a minute. They are helpful when
trying to compare two quantities.
 EXAMPLES
• Billy drove 300 miles in 5 hours. Carlos drove 440
miles in 8 hours.Who drove faster.

Billy Carlos
Miles 300 440
Hours 5 8

300/5= 60 miles/hour 440/8=55 miles/hour

 EXAMPLE

• An object travels 5 ft. in 8 min. How many ft will

it travel in 20 min?
1) A classroom had 35 glue sticks. If the ratio of
glue sticks to glue bottles was 5 : 2, how
many glue bottles did the classroom have?

2) A student finished 8 of her homework problems

in class. If the ratio of problems she
finished to problems she still had left was 4 : 1,
how many homework problems did she
have total?

3) On a Saturday, a library checked out 52 books. If

24 of the books were fiction, what is the
ratio of non-fiction books to fiction books checked
out?
 What are proportions
• A proportion is a statement that two ratios are equal.
• It can be written in two ways; as two equalfraction a/b= c/d;
or using a colon,a:b=c:d.
• It is read as “a is to b” as “c is to d”
• Cross products can be used to find a missing term in a
proportion.
 EXAMPLE
• In a horror movie featuring a giant beetle, the
beetle appeared to be 50 feet long. However,
a model was used for the beetle that was
really only 20 inches long. A 30-inch tall model
building was also used in the movie. How tall
dis the building seem in the movie.
20 inches = 30 inches
50 feet x
x = 75 feet
• If twelve inches correspond to 30.48 centimeters, how many centimeters are there in thirty
inches?

• A metal bar ten feet long weighs 128 pounds. What is the weight of a similar bar that is two
feet four inches long?

• The tax on a property with an assessed value of $70 000 is $1 100. What is the assessed value
of a property if the tax is $1 400?

• One piece of pipe 21 meters long is to be cut into two pieces, with the lengths of the pieces
being in a 2 : 5 ratio. What are the lengths of the pieces?

• You are installing rain gutters across the back of your house. The directions say that the
gutters should decline 1/4 inch for every four feet. The gutters will be spanning thirty-seven
feet. How much lower than the starting point (that is, the high end) should the low end be?

• Biologists need to know roughly how many fish live in a certain lake, but they don't want to
stress or otherwise harm the fish by draining or dragnetting the lake. Instead, they let down
small nets in a few different spots around the lake, catching, tagging, and releasing 96 fish. A
week later, after the tagged fish have had a chance to mix thoroughly with the general
population, the biologists come back and let down their nets again. They catch 72 fish, of
which 4 are tagged. Assuming that the catch is representative, how many fish live in the lake?
 PERCENTAGE
• Percentage is a part of a whole or a fraction expressed in
hundreds; the result obtained by multiplying a number by a
percent.
• Is a rate o proportion per hundred
• Percent means “for every 100” or "out of 100." The (%)
symbol as a quick way to write a fraction with a denominator
of 100. As an example, instead of saying "it rained 14 days out
of every 100," we say "it rained 14% of the time."
EXAMPLE
• Sarah is buying a pair of jeans. The original price was £75, but there is a discount
of 30%. How much will the discount be.
• A car costs £9,999.90 before VAT (value added tax). Work out the cost of the VAT if
it is charged at 20%.
• Ajay is dealing in electrical goods. He buys a radio for £45 and sells it for £63. What
is his percentage profit?
• Charlotte buys a coat in a sale for £60. The original cost of the coat was £80. What
is the percentage decrease?
• Jerry, an electrician, worked 7 months out of the year. What percent of the year
did he work?
• There are 28 students in a class. Sixteen of those students are men. What percent
of the class are women?
• Donovan took a math test and got 35 correct and 10 incorrect answers. What was
the percentage of correct answers?
• A student earned a grade of 80% on a math test that had 20 problems. How many
problems on this test did the student answer correctly?
• A woman put $580 into a savings account for one year. The rate of interest on the
account was 6½%. How much was the interest for the year in dollars and cents?