One fifth of the movie audience left the theater in disgust. If 72 angry patrons walked out how many were there originally

360 members.

Step-by-step explanation:

One fifth () of the movie audience left the theater. Let the total number of audience be x. Then according to the statement   of x audience members left the theater.

We are also told that the number of audience members which walked out was 72. So this means, One-Fifth of the audience members(x) is 72. In equation form we can write this as:

Multiplying both sides by 5, we get:

This means, there were originally 360 members in the audience before 72 of them walked out.