some math thing

shhh

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I have three times as many female ants as male ants. I know that the survival rate of female ants is twice as good as it is for males. If I have 90 female ants and 12 of them die, how many male ants should be left?
 
some math thing

I have three times as many female ants as male ants. I know that the survival rate of female ants is twice as good as it is for males. If I have 90 female ants and 12 of them die, how many male ants should be left?
Hello. I see two different ways to interpret this paragraph, each leading to a different answer. From where did you get this "math thing"?

 
I have three times as many female ants as male ants. I know that the survival rate of female ants is twice as good as it is for males. If I have 90 female ants and 12 of them die, how many male ants should be left?
We'd like to see any work you've done, as well as how you interpret the problem. In particular, have you been taught what "survival rate" means? Or do you have a guess, based on other things you've learned?

If you have no idea, you might answer these questions, in order:
  • How many male ants are there at the start?
  • What is the survival rate for female ants?
  • What is the survival rate for male ants?
and so on.
 
First, let's break this down step by step.

1. You have 90 female ants to start with.
2. Twelve female ants die, so you're left with 90 - 12 = 78 female ants.
3. Your statement says you have three times as many female ants as male ants.

Since you had 90 female ants initially:
- If females are three times more, the number of male ants would be 90 / 3 = 30 male ants.

The survival rate of female ants is twice as good as for males, but we don't need that for this specific calculation. We just need to know how many ants were there originally.

So the initial number of male ants is 30.

Therefore, the number of male ants that should be left is 30 because we didn't account for any male ants dying.
 
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