Ratio, proportion and rates of change worksheet — GCSE Higher

1.A coach journey is 372 miles in total. After a stop, the coach has travelled 217 miles. Write the distance still to travel as a fraction of the total journey. Give your answer in its simplest form.

2.The number of tickets a group can afford is inversely proportional to the price per ticket. At £4 per ticket, the group can afford 12 tickets. Work out how many tickets the group can afford at £6 per ticket.

3.A straight-line graph passes through the origin and the point (4, 10). The line represents y = kx. Write down the ratio x : y in its simplest form.

4.A salt solution has a concentration of 10%. The solution contains 50 g of salt. Work out the total mass of the solution.

5.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.

6.It takes 8 painters 6 days to paint a fence. Working at the same rate, work out how many days 4 painters would take to paint the same fence.

7.The density of a type of solid plastic is 0.9 g/cm³. Work out the mass of 0.5 m³ of the plastic, in kilograms.

8.Priya is paid £58.50 for working 7.5 hours on a Saturday. Work out her rate of pay, in £ per hour.

9.A tangent to a curve at the point where x = 3 passes through the points (1, 2) and (5, 14). A candidate says: "The gradient of the tangent at x = 3 is 3, because 14 − 2 = 12 and 12 ÷ 4 = 3." Which statement is correct?

10.An online shop's total number of orders received is recorded at the end of each day for five consecutive days: Day 1, 1,284 orders; Day 2, 1,509 orders; Day 3, 1,830 orders; Day 4, 2,296 orders; Day 5, 2,510 orders. Work out between which two consecutive days the average rate of increase in orders was greatest.

11.A graph shows y plotted against x. The graph is a curve that gets closer to both axes but never touches them, and y decreases as x increases. Write down whether this graph could show direct proportion, inverse proportion, or neither.

12.Two mathematically similar jugs have heights 8 cm and 12 cm. The smaller jug holds 200 ml when it is full. Work out how much the larger jug holds when it is full.

13.Write the ratio 5 : 8 in the form 1 : n.

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.The population of a town, P thousand, is plotted against time, t years, since 2020. A tangent to the graph at t = 6 has gradient 2.5. What does this gradient represent?