Video Transcript
A team of basketball players threw the ball 2500 times doing that training. They missed 40 balls. At this rate, how many balls did the team throw if the total number of balls they missed was 128 balls?
We’re told that the team missed 40 out of 2500 balls. This can be written as a fraction as 40 over or out of 2500. We need to calculate the total number of balls thrown if they missed 128 balls at the same rate. To find equivalent fractions, we need to multiply the numerator and the denominator by the same number. Our first step here is to work out what we multiply 40 by to give us 128. 128 divided by 40 is equal to 3.2. This means that 40 multiplied by 3.2 is equal to 128. We have multiplied the numerator by 3.2, so we have to multiply the denominator by 3.2. 2500 multiplied by 3.2 is equal to 8000. We can, therefore, say that the team threw 8000 balls if they missed 128.
We’ll now look at an alternative method we could have used if we didn’t have a calculator. We can do this by setting up a little table with the number of balls missed and the total number of balls thrown. 40 balls were missed when 2500 were thrown in total. 40 multiplied by three is equal to 120 as four multiplied by three is equal to 12. 2500 multiplied by three is equal to 7500, as 25 multiplied by three is equal to 75. This tells us that, at the same rate, if 120 balls were missed, then 7500 were thrown altogether.
40 divided by five is equal to eight. This means that we need to divide 2500 by five to work out the total number of balls thrown when eight were missed. 25 divided by five is equal to five. Therefore, 2500 divided by five is equal to 500. We now have the total number of balls thrown for 120 misses and eight misses. Adding 120 and eight gives us 128. Adding 7500 and 500 gives us 8000. We have once again proved that when 128 balls were missed, there were a total of 8000 balls thrown.
