Once upon a time, when my kids and I were young…
Later the same year, not too long after our discussion of the Bill Gates proportions, I stumbled on some more data. I discovered that the median American family’s net worth was $93,100 in 2004, most of that being home equity.
This gave me another chance to play around with proportions. And since I was preparing a workshop for our regional homeschooling conference, I wrote a sample problem:
The median American family has a net worth of about $100 thousand. Bill Gates has a net worth of $56 billion. If Average Jane Homeschooler spends $100 in the vendor hall, what would be the equivalent expense for Gates?
In the last post, I explained that a proportion sets two ratios equal to each other, like equivalent fractions. Each ratio must compare similar thing to similar thing in the same order.
In this case, we are interested in the ratio “Expense compared to Net Worth.”
Continue reading Homeschool Memories: Bill Gates Proportions II
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 
