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Comparing fractions with the same numerator

Lindsay compares fractions with the same numerator. She compares one pair of fractions with visuals and another pair without visuals. Created by Lindsay Spears.

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Video transcript

- [Voiceover] Let's compare 5/6 and 5/8. Let's think about what they mean. 5/6 means five out of six pieces. If you have a whole, let's say a whole cake and you cut it into six pieces, 5/6 is five of those six pieces. 5/8 again is five pieces. That's something that's the same. We're both talking about five pieces, but this time, we've split our cake into eight pieces, so it's five out of eight pieces. We can represent that by drawing it. Maybe we can draw, here is one whole. And then another one. So these are two equal wholes, and on one of them, we can shade 5/6 and the other 5/8. That way we can look and compare them. So for 5/6, if we divide this whole, and we were using the example of cake, into six equal-size pieces, not sure if those are perfect, but let's say those are six equal-size pieces, 5/6 is talking about five of those pieces. So one, two, three, four, five. This image represents 5/6. Now for 5/8, let's think about it for a second. Will the pieces in 5/8 be bigger or smaller than 5/6? Are eighths bigger or smaller than sixths? Well, we can draw and see. If we have the same size whole, which we need to have the same size whole, and we draw and we split it into eight pieces this time, so now we have fourths, and eighths, these pieces, these eighths, 1/8 is smaller than a sixth 'cause this time we had to split the cake between eight people, so we got smaller pieces. Now again we can shade five of them. Seems like five pieces might be equal to five pieces, but we can look and see. Four, five, and now we can look and see the 5/6 takes up more space, takes up more area, this is a larger amount, and the reason is because each sixth, each piece is larger. So five larger pieces is more than five smaller pieces, or is greater than, and remember with our symbol, the open side, the larger side, should be facing our larger number. So 5/6 is greater than 5/8. Here's one more, but this time, let's try to compare them without drawing, let's just think about what these mean. 2/5 means two pieces out of five. So one whole was split five ways and we got two of the pieces. 2/3 means that same whole was split three ways and we got two of the pieces. Well which two pieces are larger? The 2/3 are larger, 'cause if we only have to split our pieces three ways, we can have larger pieces. So the 2/5 are smaller. These two smaller pieces are less... These two smaller pieces are less than the two larger pieces, and again, the open end of our symbol should be facing the larger number. So 2/5 is less than 2/3.