Mountain Bike Gear Ratio. Simple, just divide your rear cog size from your front chainring size. It can in fact be said that front chainrings provide a wider gear ratio range, while rear sprockets provide differences in gear ratios of adjacent gears.
Table below: Shows table of all possible chainring/sprocket combinations with gear ratio. The gear you're in is a simple ratio of the number of teeth on the chainring to the number of teeth on the sprocket in use. My main passion on a bike is long steep low gear grinding hills (think of grinding up the face of Aspen Mountain on Summer.
In a fixed gear or single speed bike, having the right gear ratio according to your needs and cycling habits is very important since you can't change your gears while riding.
For the basics on how to change up and down the gears, we explained shifting on Shimano, SRAM and Campagnolo gear systems here.
Simple, just divide your rear cog size from your front chainring size. To adjust bike gears, start by turning your bike upside down and resting it on the seat and handlebars. Riding mostly flatland singletrack is a lot different from riding mountain trails, for example.