In Example 2, change 18 ft to 16 ft.

Data from Example 2

The length of a certain room is 24 ft, and the width of the room is 18 ft. Therefore, the ratio of the length to the width is 24/18 or 4/3.

If the width of the room is expressed as 6 yd, we have the ratio 24 ft/6 yd = 4 ft/1 yd. However, this does not clearly show the ratio. It is better and more meaningful first to change the units of one of the measurements to the units of the other measurement. Changing the length from 6 yd to 18 ft, we express the ratio as 4/3 as we saw above. From this ratio, we can easily see that the length is 4/3 as long as the width.