Mr. george divided his money in the ratio 2: 6 between evan and ricky. evan got the smaller amount of $420. how much did ricky receive

Ratios are like fractions in the way that you can simplify them if they have common factors.
we can simplify this ratio to 
1:3
that means that the bigger part got 3 times the amount of the smaller part. The problem says that Evan got the smaller amount, so if we multiply the smaller amount by 3 we should and will get the bigger amount. It says that $420 is the smaller part.
420*3=1260
so the bigger amount of money is $1260
So, because Ricky got the bigger part of Mr. George's money, he must have received
$1260