# Math Help - Urgent Help for Police entrance exam!!

1. ## Urgent Help for Police entrance exam!!

hey guys. i have a police entrance exam on monday. i have just looked at the maths part of the paper and i need help. i was never good at maths. the there are a few questions like this :

There are 36,000 protestors. the ratio of police to protester is 1:180. how many police officers is there?

i cant use a calculator and im stuck.

2. Originally Posted by dazwesty
hey guys. i have a police entrance exam on monday. i have just looked at the maths part of the paper and i need help. i was never good at maths. the there are a few questions like this :

There are 36,000 protestors. the ratio of police to protester is 1:180. how many police officers is there?

i cant use a calculator and im stuck.

Write this as a fraction. $\frac{p}{36000}=\frac{1}{180}$. This is just saying that the ratio of police officers to protesters is equal. Solve for p.

3. thanks for the help. however, i still dont understand

4. basically it means that there are 1 police officer per every 180 protesters.
So if you had 180 protesters then there would be only 1 police officer. If you had 360 protesters you would have 2 police officers.

Try dividing the 36,000 protesters by 180 and see what number of police officers you come up with.

I hope that explanation helped a little bit.

5. Continuing the explanation from above - if there are 180 protestors, there is 1 police officer. If there are 360 protestors, there are 2 police officers, and so on.

So, if there are 3,600 protestors, there are 20 police officers. (3,600 = 360 x 10; 20 = 2 x 10).

If there are 36,000 protestors, there are 200 police officers. (36,000 = 360 x 100; 200 = 2 x100).

Basically, your group of 36,000 protestors can be thought of as 100 separate groups, each consisting of 360 protestors. Each of those 100 groups require two cops, so we need 200 cops total.

There's no need for a calculator - the numbers work quite nicely.

6. thanks for the help guys

7. Originally Posted by Jameson
Write this as a fraction. $\frac{p}{36000}=\frac{1}{180}$. This is just saying that the ratio of police officers to protesters is equal. Solve for p.
$
\frac{p}{36000}=\frac{1}{180} \Rightarrow p = \frac{36000}{180} = \frac{3600}{18} = \frac{18 \cdot 200}{18} = 200$
.

So the answer to the question is clearly not enough.