1/8 = one slice of pizza

tokenadult · on May 3, 2009

1/8 = one slice of pizza

How does this even answer the question that was asked?

(It's hardly likely that an elementary teacher would need this suggestion, as all elementary math textbooks show fractions as slices of pies or pizzas.)

Do you mean because one-eight of a whole is 0.125 of a whole? That would be a good reason to teach the decimal representation of that fraction, if that is what you are suggesting.

P.S. Some pizza restaurants I frequent here cut pizzas into twelfths. This probably depends on local custom and the size of the pizza.

cromulent · on May 4, 2009

The question that was asked was: Any ideas?

That was my idea - a real-world example (for the age group) of why the third decimal place is important.

Regarding your local pizzas, it was an example - it may not be valid for all situations, unfortunately, but there's no dependency.

tokenadult · on May 4, 2009

I'm surprised you didn't write 1/8 = 0.125 to make the point clear, because 1/8 of ANYTHING is 0.125 of the whole thing.

A cut of pizza into eighths can be done visually (and probably usually is done visually) with no knowledge of decimals at all.