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Fractions Videos 8 videos
¿Piensas que sumar y restar fracciones propias es divertido? Oh, bien, entonces tú has experimentado solamente una fracción de lo divertido que...
Once you're done reducing fractions, you can reuse and recycle them, too.
Dividing fractions just means multiplying the first fraction by the reciprocal of the second fraction. But why do your fractions need dividing to b...
Introduction to Fractions 3315 Views
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Description:
Shmoop can get behind anything that helps you eat pie.
Transcript
- 00:01
Fractions, a la Shmoop. Have you ever run into the prickly situation
- 00:11
of having four people... and only one pizza? Or tried baking a cake that didn't turn out
- 00:16
so well because you put exactly one cup of everything into it?
- 00:20
It certainly would be wonderful if everything came out to a nice, even number, but our world
- 00:24
doesn't work that way. To communicate and make sense of all those
Full Transcript
- 00:28
bits and pieces in between, we rely on -- "fractions". For example, if you just broke up with your
- 00:34
boyfriend, you are now half of one couple. It's okay though - he was a half-wit anyway.
- 00:41
Let's start by breaking down one of these suckers.
- 00:43
At least give it a half-hearted attempt. Up top you've got your numerator.
- 00:45
And downstairs is the denominator. The denominator tells us how many total pieces
- 00:50
make up the whole... While the numerator says how many of those
- 00:54
pieces we're talking about. So if your mother tells you that you can have
- 00:57
one-half of a pizza...
- 00:59
...she is saying that you can have ONE of the TWO pieces left over.
- 01:03
She also seems to care very little about your nutritional health.
- 01:05
You couldn't at least start with a salad?
- 01:07
Anyways, a fraction may also appear in the form of a Mixed Number, which is a combination
- 01:13
of a whole number and a fraction.
- 01:15
It's like getting a "two"-fer. For example, if you're baking Shmooperdoodle
- 01:19
cookies, you'll see clearly that it asks for two-and-three-fourths cups of chocolate chips.
- 01:24
Yeah, we love chocolate that much.
- 01:27
It's the same as eleven-fourths, but there's probably not a level for that on your measuring
- 01:31
cup. Anytime we get a fraction where the numerator
- 01:34
is larger than the denominator... ...we call them "improper fractions."
- 01:38
Just don't invite these improper guys to a fancy dinner party.
- 01:41
Fractions help us better communicate what we want, because they give us a larger math
- 01:45
vocabulary. Without them, every football game would be
- 01:48
only one "game" long... ...it would be impossible to fairly divide
- 01:52
food... ...and Fellini's classic film "8 ½" would
- 01:55
simply be called "8." In short, life would be more difficult...
- 01:59
and we would only be having a fraction of the fun.
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