Use Fractions as Operators

Using fractions as operators is quite a mouthful, so we usually simplify it to 'finding a fraction of an amount'.

Imagine that you have a budget which you need to share between members of a team. 

You may want to give a quarter of the budget to one person and three-quarters to another. 

How would you do this?

You need to remember one key fact when finding fractions of an amount: 

Divide by the denominator, multiply by the numerator.

e.g. Work out

To work this out, we need to know that the word of in maths just means multiply.

So what we're actually working out is:

If we look back to our rule: Divide by the denominator, multiply by the numerator.

We need to divide 35 by 7 which gives us 5.

We then must multiply 5 by 2 to get 10.

So two-sevenths of 35 is 10.

Job done!

In this activity, you will find fractions of amounts by applying the rule:

Divide by the denominator, multiply by the numerator.