A rate ratio is like comparing how many cookies you eat in one hour to how many cookies your friend eats in one hour. Imagine you eat 4 cookies in one hour and your friend eats 2 cookies in one hour. The rate ratio between you and your friend is 2:1, which means you eat cookies at a rate that's twice as fast as your friend.
But a rate ratio can also be used to compare things that are not related to eating cookies, like the number of people who get sick in one town compared to the number of people who get sick in another town. For example, if 10 people get sick in Town A and 5 people get sick in Town B, the rate ratio between the two towns is 2:1, which means the number of people who get sick in Town A is twice as much as Town B.
Basically, a rate ratio is a way to compare two different rates or amounts and understand how they relate to each other. It helps us understand how often things happen and how they differ between different groups or places.