What fraction is is greater 26 or 58?

Answer 1

A fraction of something is an amount that is less than whole of it.#

Both 26 and 58 are greater than 1 so are not fractions in that sense.

A fraction is really a portion of something. If you divide an apple into 4 equally sized segments, then you have divided a whole apple into 4 parts. The whole apple is a single apple, so the quantity of apples is 1.

Each segment is a fraction of the fraction of the whole apple - a fraction of 1.

We represent this with the quantity, 1, with a line underneath to indicate that it has been divided into parts. The number of parts goes underneath :

1

_

4

So each of the 4 segments of the is one fourth of the whole apple. We normally call it one quarter.

If we had

1

_

26

and

1

_

58

Then we would have fractions - one 26th of a whole and one 58th of a whole.

If you divide something into more parts, then each part is going to be smaller. So 1/58 is smaller than 1/26.

# But 26 and 58 on their own are not fractions in the sense I have given.

However, you can treat them as fractions :

26

_

1

and

58

_

1

This is because 1 part of any number is that number. In this sense, these numbers are fractions, and 58 is the largest of the two.