if 12 people can paint 15 houses in 24 days, how many days would it take for 3 people to paint 5 houses?

1/4 the people, so 4 times as long

1/3 the houses, so 1/3 as long
So, 24 * 4/3 = 32 days

Or, consider that there are 12*24/15 = 96/5 man-days per house
Now multiply that by 5houses/3men = 32 days

To find the number of days it would take for 3 people to paint 5 houses, we can use the concept of "man-days" of work.

In the given scenario, we know that 12 people can paint 15 houses in 24 days. This means that it takes 12 * 24 = 288 man-days to paint 15 houses.

Now, let's calculate how many man-days it takes to paint 1 house. We divide the total number of man-days (288) by the number of houses (15), giving us 288 / 15 = 19.2 man-days per house.

Since we want to know how many days it would take for 3 people to paint 5 houses, we need to divide the total number of man-days required (19.2 man-days per house * 5 houses) by the number of painters (3 people):

(19.2 man-days per house * 5 houses) / 3 people = 32 man-days

Therefore, it would take 3 people 32 days to paint 5 houses.