Intro to rates

Q & A

1

Answer

ohh, just passed the unit test for unit three and now we're onto rates. and so... its kind of similar to ratios, the guy said. and i also found it interesting, i use rates in daily life! like for my petsitting service, i have multiple dog walking packs that people can choose from but i'll just explain one. so like, its one 20 minute walk, a week for 4 weeks. and each walk costs $15. and so 15 times 4 is 60. so its like, i guess the rate would be $15 per walk. but yeah, like, there's miles per hour. or calories per serving. the guy said. and so how said that without rates, it'd be hard to quantify how fast things are happening. oh, and i remember that with track, we would know like... how fast we had to go per minute in order to reach our goal of like, say, getting to the end point in five minutes. or like, i guess an even vague-er concept but still one that captures the idea is like... i beat poppy playtime chapter 1 in 30 minutes time. now i'm wanting to do it in half of that time, so i have to go faster in order to do that. not just run faster but complete puzzles faster, etc. or on the piano, the faster i play notes together, the more you can hear a song come together. sometimes too fast makes it unenjoyable but y'know what i mean. i even experienced it last year when i did dog walking! i had this ambience of nelson and murdock at their office. and the audio would play for like the first eight to ten minutes of matt and foggy walking to the office and chatting. and so i wanted it to be where i would get to my destination the same time where in the audio, matt and foggy opened the door to the office. and so i realized i had to walk faster to do that. and i also made checkpoints. i get that a rate would be like, okay, it has to be say x steps a minute. but like, its the concept i'm getting at. and i didn't really use math like, "oh i have to take x steps a minute for y to happen" but i did kind of use checkpoints. so when foggy was talking about like wanting a better office, i knew i had to be at this street. or something like that! sorry, i'm rambling, this is just pretty cool.

Response

Don’t apologize for the “rambling”—this is actually you doing something really important: you’re stitching math onto lived experience, and that’s exactly how rates stop being abstract.

Let’s tighten what you just discovered so it becomes usable everywhere.

🧠 What a rate actually is (in plain terms)

A rate is just:

So your dog walking example:

• $15 per walk
  means:

• 15 dollars / 1 walk

That’s it. That’s the whole idea hiding behind all the symbols.

🐶 Your example (cleanly framed)

You said:

• 1 walk = $15

• 4 weeks = 4 walks

• total = $60

So the rate is:

15 dollars per walk15 \text{ dollars per walk}15 dollars per walk

Or:

604=15\frac{60}{4} = 15460​=15

Same thing, just viewed from different angles.

🚶‍♂ What you did with walking + audio is actually huge

This part you said?

That is literally:

🧠 rate alignment

You were intuitively solving:

That’s:

• distance / time (walking)

• progress / time (audio scene progression)

• steps / minute (your internal pacing system)

You basically built a human speed calculator without calling it that.

⚡ Why this feels easier than textbook math

Because your brain already understands:

• timing

• pacing

• matching events

• checkpoints

So instead of:

you were doing:

That’s the exact same structure as:

• miles per hour

• calories per serving

• frames per second

• dog walks per week

🧩 The hidden pattern you’re starting to see

Rates are just:

Once you see that, everything becomes:

• “How much per 1?”

• “How long per unit?”

• “How far per time?”

• “How many per batch?”

🎯 The important shift happening here

You’re moving from:

to:

That’s why coding felt similar for you earlier—because it shows the system changing in real time.

2

and so if i take 3 hours to deliver 189 newspapers, finding the rate per hour at which i deliver them would mean i need to divide 189 by 3? which is what... 63?

Answer

Yes—exactly right.

189÷3=63189 \div 3 = 63189÷3=63

So your rate is:

🧠 Why your setup works

You’re doing the core rate move:

• total amount = 189 newspapers

• total time = 3 hours

• so:

1893=63\frac{189}{3} = 633189​=63

That’s just:

🚀 Quick intuition check

You can even sanity-check it without full division:

• 3 × 60 = 180

• remainder = 9

• 9 ÷ 3 = 3

• so 60 + 3 = 63

Same result, just a different mental path.