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Thread: ratio maths problem

  1. #1

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    ratio maths problem

    Hi,

    I am trying to figure out this and it should be easy but im confusing myself.

    I have a group of 7 men and 3 woman.
    The men have taken 4 days sick leave and the women have taken 2 days.

    If I say that men have 66.66% of the sick leave (ignoring the ratio of men vs women in the subset)...it is inaccurate as there are more men in the subset.

    How would I work out a more exact figure bearing in mind the men vs women.

    Thanks for any help...

  2. #2
    I don't do your homework! opus's Avatar
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    Re: ratio maths problem

    Welcome to VBForums

    The men did take 66.66% of all the sick leave, such a statement is allways ignoring the ratio between women and men. All you can do is give the ratio between men and women as additional information.
    Something like 70% of all people take 66%.66 of all the sick leave. You should have hear similar statement regarding the private income distribution (20 % of all XX earn 50% of the total private income).
    Looking at your numbers, that 66.66% is pretty close to the ratio of 70%, especially if you look at your rather small test-group.
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    Re: ratio maths problem

    Thanks for the reply.

    NB i simplified the figures stated to keep my message clear.

    I see where you are going saying that i can put the men vs woman ratio as additional info.

    But I was sure there was some way to take this into account to get a more accurate representation percentage.

    For example, if there was 1 woman and 9 men...and the woman took 12 sick days and the men 13...then it looks inaccurate to me to say men take more sick days than women?

    But if thats all i can do...i'll note the men vs woman ratio.

    Thanks for your help.

  4. #4
    I don't do your homework! opus's Avatar
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    Re: ratio maths problem

    What you could do is, give a relation between "sickrate" men and women.
    In your example each man would have a "sickrate" of 1.444 days(13/9), each women 9 days. Put them into relation with each other and you get that men have a "sickrate" of 0.16 compared to women (1.444/9).
    I guess you were looking at such a number.
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    Only Slightly Obsessive jemidiah's Avatar
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    Re: ratio maths problem

    opus' "sickrate" is probably what you want. I just wanted to mention the units: they're sick days per man and sick days per woman. Given 1 woman with 12 sick days; 9 men with 13 sick days; the men have a sick rate of (13/9) days per man ~= 1.44 days per man, while the women (woman) have a sick rate of 12 days / woman. The female sick rate is then about 12/1.44 = 8.31 times higher than the male one. The ratio of these ratios (which is unitless) may also be what you want.
    Last edited by jemidiah; Feb 8th, 2012 at 11:57 AM. Reason: Corrected; see next post
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    I don't do your homework! opus's Avatar
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    Re: ratio maths problem

    Quote Originally Posted by jemidiah View Post
    ....The male sick rate is then about 12/1.44 = 8.31 times higher than the female one.
    Yes, I did take the wrong value to compare the sick rates (I used the number of men [9] instead of the computed sick rate for women[12]).
    However your wording seems to be off, it should read:"The female sick rate is then about 12/1.44 = 8.31 times higher than the male one."
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  7. #7
    Only Slightly Obsessive jemidiah's Avatar
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    Re: ratio maths problem

    Yes, thank you. It's been edited .
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