I have a question about fractions

Question

There are 40 students in a group. 8 of them are girls. What fraction of the students are boys?

Answer 1

Hi Oskar, how are you working through this problem? Did you figure out what fraction (portion) of the students are girls?

We can assume that the question means that if the students are not girls, they are boys. So the question is asking, of the 40 students, if 8 are girls, what portion are boys?

Girls = 8/40

Simplify by dividing both the numerator and denominator by 8.

1/5 of the students are girls.

You can then subtract 1/5 from the whole group (1).

1 can also be written as 5/5.

So 5/5 - 1/5 = 4/5

4/5 of the students are boys.

You could have also started with subtraction, first.

If there are 40 students and 8 are girls, 40 - 8 = 32 boys.

Boys = 32/40

Simplify by dividing by 8.

4/5 of the students are boys.