Why are Fractions Important

To most students and parents, fractions are considered as nothing more than torture which needs to be endured. Most struggle to think why and when fractions will ever be required in life. They wonder if they can just leave out fractions and continue with the rest of Math. However, sadly this is not possible.

Fractions are extremely important. Fractions are needed multiple times a day when assessing situations. It is used to divide workloads, to drive a car or when planning meals. Fractions are needed by architects, doctors and people in various technical fields. Fractions are needed for carrying out specific calculations. Doctors need fractions for cases else they will cut the patient a centimeter too deep and will either mutilate or kill the patient.
Houses need a foundation. If they are built without foundation, the house will be damp and muddy as it will be built on sand and mud. At some point in time, the house will collapse due to this. The same way, fractions are similar to the foundation of the house. It is needed to hold the walls up. Without fractions, one is not able to do algebra at all.

Dividing Fractions

Fractions are needed when dividing a meal, pizza or more. It is needed to get good grades; it is needed to progress in life and for so many things.

For a practical example of how dividing fractions comes into use : Suppose you have eaten a quarter of a pizza and are left with just three-quarters of it, and there are four people who walk into the room, and one says – can we have two-fifths of the pizza, you will need to check and divide three-fourths by two-fifths, and you will see that it means that you do not have enough pizza as it would mean one pizza and seven eights of the next.

Another example of where it could be used is when you have 1 acre and two-thirds of the second and the zoning requirements of the country state that you need one-thirds of the acre for putting a septic tank, you will need to see how many subplots you can divide the land into, so that the requirement is fulfilled.

There are times when carpenters need to know fractions when they need to cut out lumber which is non-integer pieces.

When you want to know dividing fractions, the rule is simple. Any number which is multiplied by the reciprocal is 1. Any number multiplied by 1 is the number, and 1 is the multiplicative identity. If a number is divided by one, it is the same number. Which means if 1 is the denominator in the fraction the only the numerator should be used.

So the first numerator divided by the first denominator when it has to be divided by the second numerator divided by the second denominator can be written as the first numerator divided by the first denominator multiplied by the second denominator divided by the second numerator. This is also known as flipping.