On a farm, for every pig there are 4 chickens. There are 12 pigs. How many chickens are there?

1 Answer
H Dev
Apr 22, 2016

48

Explanation:

You can make a proportion in here.

You know that for every pig, there are 4 chickens. This can be represented as #1/4# where 1 represents the number of pig, and 4 represents the number of chicken. This will be like the "foundational fraction" for the proportion.

Another fraction needs to be made where we know that there are 12 pigs, but we don't know how many chickens there are (which can be represented as #x#). So the fraction is #12/x#.

Note that since we put the number of pigs in the numerator and the number of chickens in the denominator of the "foundational fraction", you must do the same thing with the other fraction. Therefore, the number of pigs (12) needs to be in the numerator and the number of chickens (x) needs to be in the denominator

Put the two fractions equal to each other because they are, after all, equivalent fractions (that's that proportions deal with).

#1/4 = 12/x#

Now cross multiply to solve for #x#.
#4(12) = 1(x)#
#48 = x#

Therefore, our answer should be 48 chickens.

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