why are ratios so confusing?

Only because you do not know how to do them yet. :)

say Tom and Jane have marbles in the ratio 4:5  and Jane has  30 marbles.

Let's see what info we can get from that.

I think it is much easier to set up a box like this. :)

 

Tom	Jane	Total
4	5	4+5=9
4*6=24 So Tom has 24 marbles	30 Now 30 divided by 5 is 6 so 5*6=30 so if I multiply the others in this row by 6 I will have everything	9*6=54 so altogether there are 54 marbles. I can check this by adding Tom's and Jane's marbles together  24+30=54 great it must be correct

 

 

this is the EASY way to do it :)

Alan or someone else, I have not used the table function before and I quite liked it but I cannot work out how to put in the borders.  

 

Would someone like to play with it and work this out please. ??