Mick and latoya have some shirts. the ratio of the number of shirts mick has to the number of shirts latoya has is 3: 8. if they have a total of "k" shirts, how many fewer shirts does mick have than latoya?

This is the concept of algebra, given that Latoya and Mick have shirts that total up to k shirts, and the ratio of shirts that Mick has to Latoya is 3:8, then to solve our question we proceed as follows;
total ratio is :
3+8=11
thus the number of shirts Mick has is:
3/11*k=3/11k
The number of shirts Latoya has is:
8/11k
To calculate how many more shirts Latoya has compared to Mick we proceed as follows;
8/11k-3/11k
=5/11k
The answer is 5/11k