Question

A certain country is divided into 5 provinces. Each province consists entirely of Progressives and Traditionalists. If each province contains the same number of Traditionalists and the number of Traditionalists in any given province is 1/10 the total number of Progressives in the entire country, what fraction of the country is Traditionalist

Answer 1

one third (1/3)

Explanation:

we have 5 provinces.

Each province contains the same number of Traditionalists, let's say that there are T traditionalists per province, thus, there are:

5*T in the country.

now we know that in each province, the number of traditionalists is equal to 1/10 of the total number of progressives in the entire country.

If there are a total of P progressives in the entire country, we will have that:

T = P/10

Then the total number of traditionalists in the entire country is:

5*T = 5*(P/10) = P/2

So in the whole country, there are P progressives and P/2 traditionalists.

So the total population is:

total = P + P/2 = (3/2)*P

We want to know what fraction of the country is traditionalist, this is equal to the quotient between the traditionalist population, P/2, and the total population, (3/2)*P

This is:

`c = (P/2)/((3/2)*P) = 1/3`

So one third of the country is traditionalist.