Ratio, proportion and rates of change worksheet — GCSE Higher

1.In a class, 50% of the students study French, 30% study Spanish and the rest study German. Write down the ratio of French : Spanish : German students, in its simplest form.

2.A recipe uses flour, sugar and butter in the ratio 8 : 3 : 5. Write the ratio of flour to the rest of the mixture (sugar and butter combined) in its simplest form.

3.A company's turnover was £128 000 in 2023 and £176 000 in 2024. Work out the multiplier that changes the 2023 turnover into the 2024 turnover.

4.A gardener mixes 300 ml of plant feed concentrate with 1.2 litres of water to make a spray. Write the ratio of concentrate to water in its simplest form.

5.A shop sells rope by the metre. 3 m costs £7.50 and 5 m costs £11.00. Does this data show that the cost is directly proportional to the length of rope bought? Choose the correct verdict and reason.

6.A cyclist travels d kilometres in t hours. Write down an expression, in terms of d and t, for the cyclist's average speed in km/h.

7.A garden centre sells two mathematically similar sacks of grass seed. The amount of lawn a sack can treat is proportional to the volume of seed inside it. The smaller sack is 20 cm tall and treats a lawn of area 30 m². The larger sack is 40 cm tall. A gardener needs to treat a lawn with an area of 500 m² using only the larger sacks. Work out the minimum number of larger sacks needed.

8.There are 2500 electric cars registered in a town. The number is predicted to increase by 6% each year. Work out the predicted number of electric cars after 3 years, to the nearest whole number.

9.Two mathematically similar rectangles have lengths in the ratio 3 : 5. The area of the smaller rectangle is 27 cm². Work out the area of the larger rectangle.

10.A tank is filled at a rate of 3 litres every 2 minutes. Given that 1 litre = 1000 cm³, work out the flow rate in cm³ per minute.

11.A smoothie recipe combines 350 cm³ of mango juice with 650 cm³ of orange juice. Work out the total volume of the smoothie in litres.

12.Two numbers are in the ratio 3 : 7. Their sum is 60. Work out the positive difference between the two numbers.

13.Two mathematically similar logos are printed on a poster. They have areas 20 cm² and 45 cm². Nadia says that the length scale factor from the smaller logo to the larger logo is 45 ÷ 20 = 2.25. Give a reason why Nadia is incorrect, and work out the correct length scale factor.

14.The cost, in pounds, of hiring a minibus is modelled against the number of passengers booked. A tangent to the cost graph at 20 passengers passes through the points (16, 184) and (24, 216). Work out the instantaneous rate at which the cost increases with each extra passenger, at 20 passengers.

15.Two quantities y and z are each in direct proportion to x, and are given by y = 3x and z = 7x. Work out the difference between the value of y and the value of z when x = 4.