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Arithmetic (all content)
Course: Arithmetic (all content) > Unit 6
Lesson 4: Rewriting decimals as fractions- Write fractions as decimals (denominators of 10 & 100)
- Writing a number as a fraction and decimal
- Write decimals and fractions shown on grids
- Rewriting decimals as fractions: 0.15
- Rewriting decimals as fractions: 0.8
- Rewriting decimals as fractions: 0.36
- Write decimals as fractions
- Rewriting tricky fractions to decimals
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Rewriting tricky fractions to decimals
Learn to convert the fraction, 17/93 to a decimal. Created by Sal Khan.
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- When you get confused about which to divide by, numerator or denominator, imagine it like this. "The Cowboy and The Horse" this is a trick I learned in grade school where you imagine the numerator as the man and the denominator as the horse. The man goes inside the house to get some water and the horse stays outside. For example: 1/5
the 1 is the cowboy, and the 5 is the horse. The cowboy goes inside: /1 ; and the horse stays outside: 5/ ; therefore, 5/1. If my words were sort of confusing at all, which I'm sure they were, I'm sorry, try to understand to the best of your ability.(20 votes)- If you are confused, the top number or numerator should go under the house while the denominator (bottom number) goes outside.(1 vote)
- I cant get any energy points from this video, all other videos in section Decimals are fine. :)(7 votes)
- Well i think not all of us have the problem because i got 850 energy points(2 votes)
- If I divide 10 by 3, I get 3.3333 and continuing. Does it have a name in mathematics?(2 votes)
- That figure you got is called a repeating decimal. It can also be called a rational number, but that term also encompasses all whole numbers, and all repeating decimals.(3 votes)
- how do you convert mixed numbers to decimals.(4 votes)
- You first make it into an improper fraction then do what Sal shows in the video.(0 votes)
- Make 50 3/8 into decimal(3 votes)
- Is there a reason you use multiple zeros before needed behind the decimal point on each problem?(3 votes)
- A lot of the time you will be doing this to fractions where the numerator is smaller than the denominator. This means you will need to have at least one extra zero right from the start. You can either keep adding them as you go, or decide how many places you want to find at the beginning. The more places you find the more exact your answer will be, but there is a diminishing return; the farther out to the right you go, the less important the digits are. Usually three or four are enough to be getting on with, but pay attention to the question in case it tells you how far out to work it.(2 votes)
- so for example what happens if u get a into a situation where you have to convert a fraction that also has a number next to the numerator?(2 votes)
- umm this does make sense at all times(2 votes)
- can we remove decimal point in the numerator if theres equal amount of zeroes as decimal point iin denominator. for example 0.25/100. can we remove decimal point here(2 votes)
- yes, it would be 25/100. not 0.25/100. and you could simplify this to 1/4.(1 vote)
- how do you right tricky fractions(2 votes)
Video transcript
I'll now show you how
to convert a fraction into a decimal. And if we have time, maybe
we'll learn how to do a decimal into a fraction. So let's start with, what
I would say, is a fairly straightforward example. Let's start with
the fraction 1/2. And I want to convert
that into a decimal. So the method I'm going to
show you will always work. What you do is you take the
denominator and you divide it into the numerator. Let's see how that works. So we take the denominator-- is
2-- and we're going to divide that into the numerator, 1. And you're probably saying,
well, how do I divide 2 into 1? Well, if you remember from the
dividing decimals module, we can just add a decimal point
here and add some trailing 0's. We haven't actually changed the
value of the number, but we're just getting some
precision here. We put the decimal point here. Does 2 go into 1? No. 2 goes into 10, so we go 2
goes into 10 five times. 5 times 2 is 10. Remainder of 0. We're done. So 1/2 is equal to 0.5. Let's do a slightly harder one. Let's figure out 1/3. Well, once again, we take the
denominator, 3, and we divide it into the numerator. And I'm just going to add a
bunch of trailing 0's here. 3 goes into-- well, 3
doesn't go into 1. 3 goes into 10 three times. 3 times 3 is 9. Let's subtract, get a
1, bring down the 0. 3 goes into 10 three times. Actually, this decimal
point is right here. 3 times 3 is 9. Do you see a pattern here? We keep getting the same thing. As you see it's
actually 0.3333. It goes on forever. And a way to actually represent
this, obviously you can't write an infinite number of 3's. Is you could just write 0.--
well, you could write 0.33 repeating, which means that
the 0.33 will go on forever. Or you can actually even
say 0.3 repeating. Although I tend to
see this more often. Maybe I'm just mistaken. But in general, this line on
top of the decimal means that this number pattern
repeats indefinitely. So 1/3 is equal to 0.33333
and it goes on forever. Another way of writing
that is 0.33 repeating. Let's do a couple of, maybe a
little bit harder, but they all follow the same pattern. Let me pick some weird numbers. Let me actually do an
improper fraction. Let me say 17/9. So here, it's interesting. The numerator is bigger
than the denominator. So actually we're going to
get a number larger than 1. But let's work it out. So we take 9 and we
divide it into 17. And let's add some trailing 0's
for the decimal point here. So 9 goes into 17 one time. 1 times 9 is 9. 17 minus 9 is 8. Bring down a 0. 9 goes into 80-- well, we know
that 9 times 9 is 81, so it has to go into it only eight times
because it can't go into it nine times. 8 times 9 is 72. 80 minus 72 is 8. Bring down another 0. I think we see a
pattern forming again. 9 goes into 80 eight times. 8 times 9 is 72. And clearly, I could keep
doing this forever and we'd keep getting 8's. So we see 17 divided by 9 is
equal to 1.88 where the 0.88 actually repeats forever. Or, if we actually wanted to
round this we could say that that is also equal to 1.--
depending where we wanted to round it, what place. We could say roughly 1.89. Or we could round in
a different place. I rounded in the 100's place. But this is actually
the exact answer. 17/9 is equal to 1.88. I actually might do a separate
module, but how would we write this as a mixed number? Well actually, I'm going
to do that in a separate. I don't want to
confuse you for now. Let's do a couple
more problems. Let me do a real weird one. Let me do 17/93. What does that equal
as a decimal? Well, we do the same thing. 93 goes into-- I make a really
long line up here because I don't know how many
decimal places we'll do. And remember, it's always the
denominator being divided into the numerator. This used to confuse me a lot
of times because you're often dividing a larger number
into a smaller number. So 93 goes into 17 zero times. There's a decimal. 93 goes into 170? Goes into it one time. 1 times 93 is 93. 170 minus 93 is 77. Bring down the 0. 93 goes into 770? Let's see. It will go into it, I think,
roughly eight times. 8 times 3 is 24. 8 times 9 is 72. Plus 2 is 74. And then we subtract. 10 and 6. It's equal to 26. Then we bring down another 0. 93 goes into 26--
about two times. 2 times 3 is 6. 18. This is 74. 0. So we could keep going. We could keep figuring
out the decimal points. You could do this indefinitely. But if you wanted to at least
get an approximation, you would say 17 goes into 93 0.-- or
17/93 is equal to 0.182 and then the decimals
will keep going. And you can keep doing
it if you want. If you actually saw this on
exam they'd probably tell you to stop at some point. You know, round it to the
nearest hundredths or thousandths place. And just so you know, let's try
to convert it the other way, from decimals to fractions. Actually, this is, I
think, you'll find a much easier thing to do. If I were to ask you what
0.035 is as a fraction? Well, all you do is you say,
well, 0.035, we could write it this way-- we could write
that's the same thing as 03-- well, I shouldn't write 035. That's the same
thing as 35/1,000. And you're probably
saying, Sal, how did you know it's 35/1000? Well because we went to 3--
this is the 10's place. Tenths not 10's. This is hundreths. This is the thousandths place. So we went to 3 decimals
of significance. So this is 35 thousandths. If the decimal was let's
say, if it was 0.030. There's a couple of ways
we could say this. Well, we could say, oh well
we got to 3-- we went to the thousandths Place. So this is the same
thing as 30/1,000. or. We could have also said, well,
0.030 is the same thing as 0.03 because this 0 really
doesn't add any value. If we have 0.03 then we're only
going to the hundredths place. So this is the same
thing as 3/100. So let me ask you, are
these two the same? Well, yeah. Sure they are. If we divide both the numerator
and the denominator of both of these expressions by
10 we get 3/100. Let's go back to this case. Are we done with this? Is 35/1,000-- I
mean, it's right. That is a fraction. 35/1,000. But if we wanted to simplify it
even more looks like we could divide both the numerator
and the denominator by 5. And then, just to get
it into simplest form, that equals 7/200. And if we wanted to convert
7/200 into a decimal using the technique we just did, so we
would do 200 goes into 7 and figure it out. We should get 0.035. I'll leave that up to
you as an exercise. Hopefully now you get at least
an initial understanding of how to convert a fraction into a
decimal and maybe vice versa. And if you don't, just do
some of the practices. And I will also try to record
another module on this or another presentation. Have fun with the exercises.