There are 12 boys and 16 girls in a class. What is the ratio of boys to girls? Write as a fraction in simplest form.

So there are three ways that you can write a ration : you can write it like x : y ; x to y ; x / y

So the question is that there are 12 boys and 16 girls in the classroom , and that you should write a ratio to compare the amount of boys to the amount of girls . To do this , you would have to put the amount of boys in the numerator and the amount of girls in the denominator . By doing that it should look like , 

12 / 16   ;   12 to 16 ;     12 : 16   of course both this ratio can be simplify because both 12 and 16 are able to be divided by 4

 By dividing by 4 , you should get

3 / 4    ; 3 to 4 ;   3 : 4  which is your answer