fractions
Welcome! I am excited to help you master fractions. Before we dive into the math, I'd love to know a bit about your background so I can tailor this session perfectly for you.
I'm looking for a quick refresher.
A quick refresher is the perfect way to polish up those math muscles! Let's kick things off by laying down our roadmap so you can see exactly where we are headed.
Your path
Fraction Magnitude and Number Lines
Next Steps: Equivalent Fractions and Operations
At its heart, a fraction is just a way of showing parts of a whole.
Whenever you slice up a pizza, measure out ingredients for a recipe, or divide a bill, you are dealing with fractions. Historically, the word fraction actually comes from the Latin , which literally means "broken"—representing a whole unit that has been broken down into smaller pieces.
To write this mathematically, we use two numbers stacked on top of each other, separated by a middle bar. Let's look at how those two numbers work together.
Continue to the numerator and denominator
Let's zoom in on that stacked notation! The two numbers in a fraction have specific names and jobs that tell us exactly how much of the whole we are talking about.
The Denominator and Numerator
On the bottom, we have the . This is the total number of equal parts the whole has been divided into. A helpful trick to remember this is that "denominator" starts with D, just like the word Down.
On the top sits the . This tells us how many of those equal parts we actually have or are focusing on. Together, they create a single, precise value.
To see this in action, let's look at a pizza sliced into eight equal pieces, with three of those pieces highlighted. I've initiated a visualization below to help you see how these numbers line up.
A circular pizza divided into eight equal slices with three contiguous slices highlighted, connected by lines to the fraction 3/8.
In this model, the denominator is 8 because there are eight total equal slices. The numerator is 3 because we are only looking at three of those slices. We write and read this value as (three-eighths).