Ratio, Proportion, and YouTube Embedding

Sometimes, you will really appreciate if you are mathematically inclined. Knowing basic mathematics is a great advantage in many things – sometimes even in the simplest of things.

All of us use mathematics in everyday life, but most of the time, only we who are mathematically inclined appreciate it. For example, I use math when I embed Youtube videos in my blogs; I have to customize the embed dimensions depending on the size of the blog page. A sample Youtube embed code is shown below.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/h60r2HPsiuM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

In the embed code,  the width of the video is 560 pixels and the height is 315 pixels. Most of my blog post page are about 500 pixels, so I had to reduce its size.

So comes mathematics.

I want the width of the video to be 480 pixels instead of 560. What should be the height then? Using ratio and proportion, I have to compute for x in

560:315 = 480: x

which gives x = 270.  I have to replace the height in the code with 270. My new code now is

<iframe width="480" height="270" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/h60r2HPsiuM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I realized later when I checked YouTube, however,  that there is a Custom box where you just have to type the custom width and the height will be automatically computed.

Hmmm…. Never mind the Custom box. I used the harder method, but I loved it anyway.  For the not-so-acquainted in math, you can try the method above and use the Custom box to check if your answer is correct.

Photo Credit: Pink Sherbet Photography

This post was originally posted in Math Palette my other blog on July 15, 2012 .blog