A special school has a deaf-student population 3 times its blind-student population. If there are 180 students in total, how many blind students are there? Let's think first. Chain of thought:
Let the number of blind students be x. The number of deaf students will then be 3 * x = 3x students. The total number of students is x + 3x = 180 students. Combining like terms gives 4x = 180. So the value of x is 180 / 4 = 45.
Therefore, the answer is 45.