Am not very mathematically-minded. Help please! Ratios?

[Tigana]

I need to work out a ratio. Number of X's per Y.
There are 1251 X's and 120525 Y's.

[baffled]
This sort of stuff just makes my mind go blank although I suspect it is pretty "easy£ really....

Y/X = 96.3

Ratio X:Y = 1:96.3

Sorry, just re-read your post. If you want Y:X as a ratio, then do the division the other way.

X/Y = 0.0103
Ratio Y:X = 1:0.0103

Nope..no good....can't even get head around the use of colons!!

Can you express that in words (!!??)?
As an example
27 people have complained about an event out of 400 attendees...I want to know the ratio of complainers...what do I do?

(am I numerically dyslexic??)

Sorry, ratios are expressed with a colon. So, your original question was how many Xes per Y. The answer 1:0.0103 means there are 0.0103 Xes per Y.
Ok, your other example: you want to find out the ratio of complainers. You take the total number of attendees (400), divide by the number of complainers (27).
400/27 = 14.8 (round up to 15 as you don't often get 0.8 of a person). So for every 15 people there was one complainer. The ratio of complainers to total audience attendees is 1:15.
Got it?

Tigana, I ususally try working out the problem with small easy numbers, then scale up.

E.g. Think about money, 2p pieces and 10p pieces. You know there are five 2ps in a 10p, and you can see that to get there you do the equation 10p divided by 2p = 5.

If the 2p is x and the 10p is y, then the ratio is x:y, or 2:10, and the sum you do to find out how many x's in a y is y divided by x. So you need to do 120525 divided by 1251.

Clear as mud

Also had to see to dd in the middle of it, so prob 10 people have answered 5 times as clearly...

Thank you both!
I do sort of get it now, and can do the sums I need to!

Lio's example was a good one. Ratios tend to be expressed as 1:x as the lowest common denominator, so her 2:10 example would really be expressed as 1:5.
Give us a shout if you're still stuck...

Using your 27 out of 400 example...

If 1 person in an audience of 10 compained, that would be expressed as 1:10. So yours would be 27:400.

Is it becoming helpful yet?

27:400 would be expressed as 1:15 though, Lio.