Question

It took Mr. Sullivan 7 hours to drive a distance of 385 miles on a business trip. The followingweek he drove 165 miles in 3 hours. Is the relationship between the number of miles drivenand the amount of time for the two trips a proportional relationship?

Answer 1

Notice that this question is giving us two ratios.

Ratio 1: 385 miles in 7 hours.

• Ratio 2: 165 miles in 3 hours.

Now, a proportion is defined as the equality between two ratios, that means we need to put these two given ratios in an equation and see if they are equivalent.

$\frac{385}{7}=\frac{165}{3}$

Then, we divide each fraction

$55=55$

As you can observe both of them are equal to 55. That means they are in the same proportion.

Therefore, these two ratios have a proportional relationship.