Question

There are 416 students who are enrolled in an introductory Chinese course. If there are eight boys to every five girls, how many boys are in the course?

Answer 1

256 boys.

Explanation:

Let x represent number of boys in the course.

We have been given that there are 416 students who are enrolled in an introductory Chinese course. There are eight boys to every five girls.

We will use proportions to find the total number of boys in the course.

Since there are eight boys to every five girls, so there are 8 boys for 13 (8+5) total students.

`\frac{\text{Boys}}{\text{Total students}}=(8)/(13)`

Upon substituting our values in above equation, we will get:

`(x)/(416)=(8)/(13)`

Multiply both sides by 416:

`(x)/(416)*416=(8)/(13)*416`

`x=8*32`

`x=256`

Therefore, there are 256 boys in the course.