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## Stating a few assumptions before I get into this:

I'm going to explain how I use the word "rate" and the phrase "unit rate" (and also throw around the word "ratio" somewhat recklessly) and it might not match what's in your textbook or how you use the words in your classroom. Some textbooks proclaim that ratios may only involve like units whereas rates use unlike units. In the physical sciences they typically use "rate" to refer to a measurement with respect to time, specifically. All names for things are conventions. I'm not trying to say that you or your textbook or the physics teacher are wrong. Here is a complete list of the arbiters of correctness when it comes to conventions:
1. mathematical consistency
2. people in the act of communicating about the same situation understand each other
3. you're not setting up a person for massive confusion later on
The definition of a trapezoid is a good example. Is a trapezoid a quadrilateral with one and only one pair of parallel sides, or is it a quadrilateral with at least one pair of parallel sides? Said another way, is a parallelogram a special type of trapezoid, or is a parallelogram by definition never also a trapezoid? Answer: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It depends on a choice made by a person. Textbooks often present definitions like, "This is what the word means!" when they really mean something more like, "This is a choice we made in order to move forward."

I'm working on a common core aligned math curriculum for sixth grade. So something to understand as a consequence of that: I'm thinking about how to make these ideas make sense to kids in middle school. So I don't want to write a post about mathematically ironclad definitions that would pass muster with research mathematicians; I want to write a post about stuff that it would be wonderful for kids age 11-13 to understand and is also flexible and useful to build on in later studies.

And one last preliminary: sometimes it's important for teachers to understand some nuances and it's not as important for students to understand them at the same level of detail. So, I'm not suggesting that any of this post is appropriate for instructional or assessment purposes with students. For example, an appropriate question for a student might be "In a fruit punch, the ratio of cups of grape juice to cups of soda water is 2:5. How many cups of grape juice for every cup of soda water?" But this question would not be appropriate for sixth graders: "In the ratio 2:5, what is the unit rate?" Because, ew.

## Okay so here we go

A tortoise travels 10 inches in 3 minutes. A snail travels 8 inches in 3 minutes. Are they traveling at the same rate? (Assuming they're both traveling at a constant rate.)

No they are not traveling at the same rate, but I hope you didn't need to compute anything to know that. You can tell because they traveled different distances in the same amount of time. In this context, you have their distances traveled, you have the time it took, but then you have this third thing that means something concrete in the context -- how fast they are going. Their rates. We can express the tortoise's rate as 10 inches in 3 minutes or around 3.33 inches per minute or a foot-and-a-quarter every 270 seconds but the real live concrete in-context rate is the concept of how fast (or in this case, slow) he is moving.

(Note for curriculum nerds: at some point you have to make it explicit to students that "are these happening at the same rate?" is structurally the same question as "are these equivalent ratios?" Not super relevant to this discussion but it seems worth mentioning.)

At one store, 2 pounds of M&M's cost \$14. At a different store, 2 pounds of M&M's cost \$16.95. Which is a better deal? Did you have to compute anything to know that? No, you can compare the good-deal-ness without computing the cost of 1 pound or how many pounds you can get for \$1. The rate is a third thing going on here capturing how-good-is-this-deal that could be expressed in different ways, one of which is a unit price.

Those examples were different types of quantities (distance and time, weight and cost) but we can talk about rates with same quantities like volume and volume.

Kate mixes 2 oz of gin with 5 oz of tonic water. Ashli mixes 3 oz of gin with 7 oz of tonic water. Are they sipping the same beverage? This is not so easy because none of the quantities match up. So now we need to find how many ounces of gin for one ounce of tonic water for each beverage right? We could, for sure, but we don't have to. We just have to compare equivalent ratios for the same amounts in the different concoctions:

If I used 3 oz of gin to mix a beverage that tastes the same as my original drink, I would need 7.5 oz of tonic water. Ashli only mixed her 3 oz of gin with 7 oz of tonic water, so Ashli's was a bit stronger than mine. Here, that third hidden thing going on is the potency of the beverage, and I'm still asserting that it's a rate, and I still haven't figured out how many of anything per one of anything.
So, let's sum up what we have so far: in any set of equivalent ratios that represents a context, there is a third thing that characterizes something meaningful about those two things happening at the same time. It could be land speed, how much of a good deal you are getting, beverage strength, the tempo of a song (number of beats to number of minutes), how crowded my neighborhood feels (number of people to square miles)... This third thing hidden within a set of equivalent ratios is a concept I'm calling a rate.

But then, it's often convenient to refer to the special equivalent ratio that is something-paired-with-a-one: "how many of these for every one of those?" It is convenient for at least two reasons (and probably more). First, it helps you solve equivalent ratio problems pretty quickly. For example, I know that I get a certain lovely shade of orange acrylic paint if I mix 3 teaspoons of yellow paint with 2 teaspoons of red paint, but I want to make the same shade and I need alot of it so I want to use up the 9 teaspoons of red paint I have on hand. How much yellow paint should I mix it with? I might approach that problem in any number of ways, but a good way is to reason that 2:3 is equivalent to 1:1.5, so to solve 9:? I just need to multiply 1.5 by 9. (This explanation would be clearer if I drew you a ratio table or another double number line but I am getting tired and it's almost cocktail hour.) It's convenient to use a word to name the 1.5, and "unit rate" is as good a name as any. I like how the "unit" part reinforces that it has something to do with 1. A question kids should be able to answer as part of their process is, "What does the 1.5 mean in this context?" and they should be able to say "there are 1.5 teaspoons of yellow paint for every 1 teaspoon of red paint."

Second, it's a way to express that third thing in a set of equivalent ratios with just a single value which can be algorithmetized (like if you want to tell a computer how to do it.) In the gin-and-tonic example above, we could have computed that Kate's drink had 2/5 oz gin for every ounce of tonic water, and Ashli's drink had 3/7 ounce of gin per ounce of tonic water, and since 3/7 is greater than 2/5, Ashli's was stronger.

Then actually later in seventh grade I could write an equation for the relationship that is my recipe, g = 2/5 t, where t is volume of tonic water and g is volume of gin, and 2/5 is re-named the constant of proportionality for the set of all gins and tonics of that particular strength, and I could graph this equation and an equation representing Ashli's recipe and note that the line representing her recipe is steeper, but we're really getting ahead of ourselves here.

Okay, this was a long post, but we're almost done. I believe that my interpretation is supported by the CCSS standards and the RP progression document, although I also believe that those documents also allow you to conclude that rate only means "how many of these for every one of those" (because the only examples they give for "rate" are quantities per 1). But if you're going to use rate to mean how much of this for every one of that, I think you need to come up with another word for that third-thing physical quantity that I am calling rate.

Alright. Comments are on. Come at me, nerds.
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