Final answer:
To find out how many boys are in the band with the same boy-to-girl ratio as in the chorus, we calculate the ratio from the chorus which is 5:7. We then divide the total number of band students (48) by the total number of parts (12) to find the value of one part and multiply it by the parts that represent boys to get 20 boys.
Step-by-step explanation:
The question asks how many boys are in the band if the ratio of boys to girls in the chorus is the same as in the band. The chorus has 36 students with 15 boys. We presume that the remaining 21 are girls, giving us a boy-to-girl ratio of 15:21 which simplifies to 5:7. The band has 48 students, and we need to apply the same 5:7 ratio to find out the number of boys.
To maintain the 5:7 ratio in a group of 48 students, we divide 48 by the total parts of the ratio, which is 5 parts for boys and 7 parts for girls, making 12 parts in total. So, 48 divided by 12 equals 4, which means that each part of our ratio represents 4 students. Since there are 5 parts that represent boys, we multiply 5 (parts for boys) by 4 (number of students per part) to get the number of boys in the band. Thus, 5 × 4 = 20 boys are in the band.