If you ask 100 people and 60 say they are students, then you would assume that 60/100 people in town as a whole are students. To estimate the non-student population, you would infer that the other 40 are not students, thus making the non-student to student ratio 40:60 or 2:3 when simplified. This means that for every 2 non-students, there are 3 students. If we multiply 2000 by this 2:3 ratio, we would see that 2/3*2000 = the non-student population.The non-student population is estimated at 1,333.
