Dividing whole things into fractions

Speaker: When you split a whole thing into parts you get fractions.

When you divide a whole into 2 equal parts, you get 2 halves.

Even if they don't look the same shape, if the 2 parts are equal they are always halves.

And if you cut something in 4, you get quarters.

If I cut the tray of flapjack into 8, the 8, representing eighths, is written on the bottom.

This tells you how many equal parts the whole has been divided into.

If we then have 3 of those 8 parts, we would write the 3 on the top.

So 3 eighths of our whole flapjack.

Different fractions can represent the same quantity or part of the whole.

Speaker: I've made my cake and now I need to cut it up into 12 pieces.

I'm going to cut it up into 3 equal parts first… so that's thirds.

I then cut each of them in half. I've now got 6 parts, so that's sixths.

I cut each part one more time… now the cake is in twelfths.

There are other ways to slice this up. And if I eat one…

(SPEAKER EATS A SLICE OF CAKE, LEAVING ELEVEN TWELFTHS)

Speaker: Some fractions, decimals and percentages mean the same thing.

3 quarters is the same as 75% or 0.75.

So half is the same as 50% or 0.5.

A quarter is the same as 25% or 0.25.

They're pretty common and it's really good to know them.