How do ratios help us compare two amounts?
The 2-to-1 Detective
How do ratios help us compare two amounts?
Here is a tiny question that runs the whole world: how do two things stack up against each other? Not "how big is this?" but "how big is this compared to that?" That little word — compared — is where ratios live. A ratio is just a way of saying how two amounts go together.
Say you make lemonade. Two cups of water, one cup of lemon juice. You could write that as "2 to 1." That's a ratio. It doesn't tell you exactly how much lemonade you have — it tells you the relationship between the two parts. Water always comes twice as fast as juice.
