The school band is comprised of middle school students to the number of high school students was 1:8. However, this year the ratio of middle school students to high school students changed to 2:7. If there is 18 middle school students in the band , how many fewer high school students are in band this year compared to last year?

1 answer

This year:
number of middle schoolers --- 2x
number of high schoolers ----- 7x
but 2x = 18
x = 9
So this year there are 18 middle schoolers, and 63 high schoolers. Total = 81

Since all we know from the previous year is the ratio of 1:8 , and there were more last year:

possible cases would be
middle - high - total
10 80 90
11 88 99
12 96 108
etc