Carcass wrote:
If 3/4 of the number of women working at Company X is equal to 2/3 of the number of men, what fraction of the employees at Company X are women?
A) 5/12
B) 8/17
C) 1/2
D) 7/12
E) 8/9
Kudos for the right answer and explanation
Notice that the question does not ask us for the NUMBER of women; it asks us to determine the PROPORTION of women in the workforce.
In these instances, we can assign a certain value to the number of women, and then see what this implies about the number of men and then go from there.
Let say there are
12 women
[12 is a nice value since it works with many of the values in the two given fractions] 3/4 of the number of women working at Company X is equal to 2/3 of the number of menLet M = # of men
We can write: (3/4)(
12) = (2/3)(M)
Simplify: 9 = (2/3)(M)
Multiply both sides by 3/2 to get: (3/2)(9) = M
Evaluate:
27/2 = MAside: Okay, so we get a fractional value for the number of men. No problem since we're supposed to answer the question....
What fraction of the employees at Company X are women?Total number of employees =
12 +
27/2 = 24/2 + 27/2 =
51/2So, the fraction of all employees who are women =
12/(
51/2)
= 24/51
[multiplied top and bottom by 2]= 8/17
[divided top and bottom by 3]Answer: B