Fractions, Decimals and Percentage

The textbook Guidelines in Number, and several detailed readings in the EMC300 Reader provide extensive discussion of fractions, decimals, and percentage, year-level by year-level, as mathematical concepts and processes. This includes a helpful horizontal row, across year-levels, on Fractions in the Scope-and-Sequence Chart for NUMBER in Guidelines in Number (un-numbered pages before page 1.)
However, as I argue in the discussions in the Reader, in my opinion one of the serious problems with the Fractions curriculum in Guidelines in Number is that it progresses to slowly, and presents concepts too simply, for too long. Also the Malaysian Curriculum Specifications from Years 1 to 6 outline the suggested curriculum for Fractions, and beyond.

Fractions are numbers, also

Without repeating much of what is covered separately in the EMC300 Reader, I want to emphasise that if we understand fractions, decimals, and percentage properly, we will realise that these are (mainly) very similar to whole numbers, and we work with NON-whole numbers in ways that are also similar to whole number calculating, number sense, and place-value. That is, we should NOT present fractions as though they are DIFFERENT. How do fractions work with place-value in ways that are similar to placevalue for whole numbers? This can be seen when we consider those special base-10 fractions called decimals. Usually with whole number place-value we work from columns at the right towards the left: we group a BASE of units into ONE-ten; then we group a BASE of ONE-tens into ONE-hundred; and so on. What if we work from left to right with base-10 place-value ideas?

Decimals as base-10 place-value extensions

When we start at the UNITS column in base-10 place-value and look towards the left, we are grouping in bundles of TEN. And so on, grouping ten bundles of TEN, then ten bundles of a HUNDRED, But consider what happens when we start at, say the THOUSANDS column, and look towards the right?! Instead of BUNDLING in lots of ten at a time, we are asking about TEN EQUAL PARTS of a thousand: ONE of these ten-equal parts is the 1 we write in that next-right column. And then we ask about TEN EQUAL PARTS OF that 1 (which we know as a hundred). Notice that we do not even need to use fraction-based versions of this place-value idea. That is, we can analyse the left-to-right UNBUNDLING or PARTS OF without needing to discuss a TENTH. See Palmer, Kays, Smith & Doig Stop! Look & Lesson (1994).

Unbundling to the right, past UNITS

As we continue unbundling, or finding equal TEN PARTS of a 1 in a place-value column, moving towards the next-right place-value column, we come to UNITS. Consider this: take a single UNIT (a 1), and split it, like UNBUNDLING, into TEN smaller, but equal parts that is what we write in the nextright column. We may not have name for it yet, but we can think about what it means. Looking back again from right to left, we know that TEN of these tenequal-parts of a UNIT make a single UNIT, of course. And we know that we write one of these ten-equal-parts of a UNIT as: ___units___|___ten-equal-parts____ 0 | 1 Without mentioning the fraction-based word tenth we can call this point-one, and we can IMMEDIATELY understand how to ADD and SUBTRACT numbers in this column to the right of the UNITS!!

Going further right

Just as we found we could count onwards, for ever, by wholes, and we could bundle into groups of TEN, column by column, moving from right to left, from units, to tens, then hundreds, so we can continue unbundling, or finding ten-equal-parts, column by column, moving from the left towards the right, past the UNITs column. If we do this one more time we get a second column, right of UNITS, and in this column each 1 is a ten-equal-part of a ten-equal-part of a UNIT. We can write place-value columns, and devise a careful place-value label for this, using ZEROES as place-holders (as we did with whole numbers, where a column had NONE of that quantity). We call this 1 in the second column point nought one or point zero one. We UNDERSTAND this 1 because it fits base-10 place-value ideas!!

Fractions being shared, like wholes

Continuing to show that fractions can be understood as working very similarly to the way whole numbers work, consider SHARING. If we share a quantity between TWO people, we are HALVING the quantity. If we share between THREE we are THIRDSING. In real English there is no such word as thirdsing -- we invent it to explain the idea. Unfortunately English words for fractional parts are irregular until we go past fifthing, and reach sixthing. After that the words become regular number-thing, whatever the number is. If we share between a million people we are millionthing.

But sharing between people is one way of doing WHOLE NUMBER division (partition). This means that FRACTIONS used this way are equivalent to DIVIDING BY A WHOLE NUMBER. Remember that division as a process of sharing is called PARTITION

Fractions and division as how many lots

If we have, for example, 23 bananas, and we share them equally between 4 people, this is DIVISION as PARTION sharing. If we have 23 bananas, and we ask How many bundles of 4 bananas can we make using 23 bananas?, this is DIVISION as the reverse of MULTIPLICATION it is also called QUOTITION. We are dividing by 4. If we have, for example, 2 pineapples, and we ask How many thirds-of-apineapple can we make out of 2 pineapples?, this is also DIVISION as QUOTITION, and we are dividing by a fraction one-third! QUOTITION DIVISION is the process where we ask, How many lots of a quantity are there in some initial amount? It works the same with whole numbers as with fractions except that we can make FEWER of the quantity-lots from the initial total if the quantity is larger than 1, and we make MORE of the lots if the quantity is smaller than 1. Quotition division dividing by a fraction is logical!

Fractions Comparing numerical magnitude

Working with whole numbers we learn to compare numerical magnitude by using our knowledge of counting, and the sequence of numbers. For example, 42 is larger than 39 because it comes AFTER 39. Number-lines and place-value explanations also help. For example, 100001 is larger than 99999 because of counting and/or place-value ideas. A similar approach works with fractions. This is easiest to see with UNITFRACTIONS, like 1/8, and 1/10. The number in the bottom of the fraction (the DENOMINATOR) tells us how many equal parts we are splitting ONE into. The larger the denominator, the more parts we get, and because there are more parts they must be smaller. Splitting 1 into 10 equal parts gives smaller single parts one-tenths than splitting 1 into 8 equal parts one-eighths. This is also logical. And number-lines and fraction walls help show this.

Comparing NON-UNIT Fractions

How can we compare two non-unit fractions, such as 2/3 and 3/4, or 4/7 and 5/8? This NOT so easy. But how can we compare the sizes, for example, of 120 centimetres and 1 metre? The answer is that we find a RULER, or comparative measuring device, that will FIT both centimetres and metres. Similarly we find a mutually compatible ruler for sevenths, and eighths, or for thirds and quarters. This is easy with centimetres and metres because they have been designed to use base-10 place-value to be mutually relatable. How to do this with sevenths and eights may not be so obvious, but the idea is that we find SOMETHING smaller than both of them that will fit evenly into both of them. With thirds and quarters this is easy twelfths! the product of 3 and 4. The factor-multiplicative idea with simple fractions motivates a similar search for a compatible smaller fraction fifty-sixths!

Comparing non-unit fractions Part 2

If A is a whole number, and B is another whole number, we can use placevalue ideas to compare them, place-value column by place-value column. For example, is 487 bigger or smaller than 523? We can see that 487 has more units, but thats not the end of the comparison. Also 487 has more tens. In this case the deciding comparison is that 487 has only FOUR hundreds, whereas 523 has a whole hundred more, and that extra hundred is bigger than the more units and more tens that 487 has. We do a similar comparison of parts for two non-unit fractions. For example, 4/7 is equivalent to 32/56. (Draw a diagram of a unit square, sliced horizontally into sevenths, and color 4 parts of it. Then slice this diagram vertically into eighths and we see there are 32 smaller parts.) Similarly we can find that 5/8 is equal to 35/56. Aha! That is 3/36 bigger!

Adding Fractions
When we ADD whole numbers we use counting and number-line ideas to explain what addition means. NOTE: In a whole-number number-line, the ones make the smallest unit on a graduated ruler that can be used to measure any whole number, and combine it with any other whole number, and measure the combined total or length. A similar idea applies to fractions, except that we dont always immediately have a graduated ruler whose smallest unit fits exactly into BOTH fractions. For example, if we add 2/13 and 5/13, the smallest unit we have on a graduated fraction number-line (ruler) is THIRTEENTHS, and it fits both fractions, se we easily see they make a total of FIVE thirteenths. Similarly, adding 2/3 and 5/6, it is easy to see that SIXTHS make the smallest unit for a graduated fraction number-line, and we find that 2/3 is equivalent to 4/6, so we have a total of NINE sixths.

Adding Fractions Not-so-compatible denominators

Suppose we are adding 5/11 and 3/7. A graduated fraction-number-line using smallest units of ELEVENTHS does not neatly fit with SEVENTHS and vice versa. But it is not hard to see that 77 is a number that can be exactly divided by 11 (that is, some whole number quantity of 11s fits exactly into 77, namely seven 11s). And 77 can also be exactly divided by 7. This means, thinking about fractions, that a graduated fraction ruler using SEVENTY-SEVENTHS can exactly fit both ELEVENTHS and SEVENTHS. This helps us see that 5/11 is equivalent to 35-seventy-sevenths; and 3/7 is equivalent to 33-seventy-sevenths. Putting these two together we have 35 and 33, or 68-seventy-sevenths. FRACTION ADDITION is a process of stepping along number-lines, just like whole-number addition.

Fraction multiplication
Whole-number multiplication is the process of saying, for example, If I have six lots of seven beads, how many beads to I have altogether? We can draw seven beads in a row, SIX times, row beneath row beneath row , and count them all, or skip-count by sevens, making SIX skips: -- none, seven, fourteen, twenty-one, twenty-eight, thirty-five, forty-two! Fraction multiplication works in a similar way. For example we might say, If I one-fifth lot of three apples, how much do I have altogether? We can draw three apples, and slice each into fifths, and take one of the one-fifth parts of each apple and we see easily we have three-fifths of a whole apple. Similarly we can ask, If I have two-thirds of a half of a pineapple, how much do I have? We can draw the pineapple halved by a horizontal cut, and slice it vertically into thirds, and take two parts of the thirds of the half-pineapple and we see easily that we have TWO sixthed parts of the whole pineapple. The DIAGRAMS may look different (adding wholes or fractions): the ideas are equivalent!

Decimals and Percentages

We have considered the way decimals (e.g. 0.1, 0.01, etc., and 1/10, 1/100, etc.) are a simple left-to-right unbundling development of the wholenumber base-10 place-value numeration system. The nature of this UNBUNDLING (slicing a whole quantity into ten equal parts) means that, rather obviously, decimals ARE fractions. They only LOOK different, as a numeration system. Exactly the same point can be made about percentages: they ARE fractions (and also they are decimals), in disguise. The percent symbol, %, represents a DENOMINATOR of 100 easy! School students need to learn to translate one system into another, while understanding the equivalence of the meanings represented.