Maths

Hi Guys,

Im doing some maths for the police entry test and was wondering if anyone can help answer this Q? I got A LOT of work to do! :s

1/8 is to 4 as 1/4 is to?

1/9
1/2
2/4
9
5
8

Im guessing it's 8 but how do u work it out??

Thanks!

You have to work out the relationship between 1/8 and 4, then apply the same relationship to 1/4.

One way to do it is to observe that 4 = 1/8 x 32, so multiplying 1/4 by 32 gives you 8.

Explained another way: 4 is 32 times bigger than 1/8, so you need to find the number that is 32 times bigger than 1/4, i.e. 8.

Hope that helps!

It's all Greek to me!

If I type out my thoughts they would go like this:

If 1/8 of something is 4, that means that something divided by 8 equals 4
That something must be 32
So, what is 1/4 of 32, or in other words what's 32 divided by 4
The answer is 8

We will all have different ways of doing these things, as Comms said though the first step is always working out the relationship between the figures that have been provided, first.

I got the same answer...but seeing the method of working it out written down makes it sound like crap. But it makes sense.

I just do the old "out of all the possible answers '8' looks right" approach, follow my instincts.

Like this one; 1/4 of a pole is blue, 1/3 of it is yellow, and the remaining 5m is green. How long is the pole?

Pumpkin


or perhaps 12 metres

Right. I got that question in a maths quiz contest thing in Napier that I somehow fluked my way into when I was 5th Form; while the rest of the team were nerds, there was me...and I read the question, within seconds thought '12' cos it made sense to me (but not to the others) and ran with it...incidently it was correct.

So who cares how you come to the answer, as long as you come to it.

By the by, I've never yet had to work out how many ninthes of an offenders fit into an eighths of an offence.