How many votes were for blue?

Question

5/8 of votes were for blue. 5/9 of the remaining were for green. And remaining 48 were for red

Answer 1

5/8 of the votes were for blue.

 

That means that 3/8 of the votes were remaining after you counted blue.

 

5/9 of those remaining votes were for green.  That means (5/9) * (3/8) = 5/24 of the votes were for green.

 

So we've now accounted for 5/8 (blue) + 5/24 (green) of the votes.  Adding those two fractions together, we get 20/24 = 5/6. 

 

So there are 1/6 of the votes left for red, which was 48.  So if 48 was 1/6 of the total number of votes, what was the total?  You can find this by multiplying 48 times 6, which is 288.

 

So if the total number of votes was 288, 5/8 * 288 is  the number that were for blue.  That's 180.