Question

The number of goats to the number of sheep in a field is in the ratio 5:8. Farmer Giles has 32 sheep. How many goats does he have?

Answer 1

Given ratio: 5 (goats) : (to) 8 (sheep.)

The question asked that if Giles had 32 sheep, then how many goats would he have. We can figure out how many goats he would have by cross multiplying fractions.

5    z
-  x  -
8  32

To figure out the z variable, we simply cross multiply 5 and 32, which gets us 160. Now we divide it by 8. Whatever we get for z, that is our answer for goats. The answer would be 20.