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ANSWER TO
FRACTIONS AND MARRIAGE
by Bill Graham
I worked on this for a while, trying all sorts of fractional
manipulations. I was getting nowhere because my brain wasn't in gear. I
finally realized that the number of married women had to equal the number
of married men (assuming the bigamy statutes hadn't been repealed). Since
I've taught algebra so long, my mind immediately started formulating
equations.
m = number of men in the town, and
w = number of women in town
3/5(w) = 2/3(m)
To get rid of the fractions, multiply the entire equation by 15 which
results in,
9w = 10m
The smallest numbers that could make this true are nine men and 10 women.
Then there are three-fifths of 10 women who are married, (six women), and
two-thirds of nine men who are married (six men). Hence, there are 12
married adults out of the 19 adults in the town, or twelve-nineteenths of
the town's adults are married. You could solve this without algebra, and
if you came up with some multiple of 9 and 10, the final answer would
still reduce to twelve-nineteenths (12/19).
So, do you really understand
fractions?
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Contents copyright 2003 by Bill Graham and ParaComp, Inc.
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Vol 1, No 7 Answers
