How do you find decimals?

Answer 1

Decimals are another way of expressing fractions. I like to use American money as a teaching tool. For example, our fifty-cent coin is a half dollar. But written as a decimal, it's 0.5 or 0.50. The same idea applies to our twenty-five-cent coin, the quarter, which is decimal 0.25.

Now, to your question: These decimal numbers are all fractions. for example,

the quarter coin is

25

----- of a dollar, spoken "twenty-five hundredths of a dollar."

100

The fifty-cent coin is

50

---- of a dollar, spoken "fifty hundredths of a dollar."

100

Any fraction can be converted to a decimal by division. In most countries, the expression of a fraction, such as

7

---- can be read either as "seven eighths" or as "seven divided by eight."

8

This means that the conversion to decimal can be accomplished by dividing 7 by eight, the result of which is 0.875. This fraction may be pronounced as "eight hundred seventy-five one thousandths," but that's very difficult, so most people just read the digits and say "decimal eight seven five" or "point eight seven five."

Decimals aren't limited to numbers less than one. If you have a dollar and a half, this can be converted to an improper fraction (where the top number is bigger than the bottom number) that looks like

3

--- dollars. Next, by doing the division, you see it as 1.5 dollars or 1.50 dollars

2