How do you divide 58 by 8?

Answer 1

58/8

Can you subtract 8 from 58, yes, that leaves a remainder of 50 which is greater than 8. Since you were able to subtract 8 once, the "quotient" is now 1. Quotient is a fancy name which keeps track of how many times you can subtract 8 the "divisor" from the original number 58 called the "dividend". Note that quotient starts with a value of zero. Now can you subtract 8 from 50. Yes you can, so increment the quotient by 1 and now its value is 2. So 50 becomes 42 after the second subtraction. If you keep proceeding this way, you will find that you can successively go through the cycle 7 times and you will then be left with 2 from which you cannot subtract 8 anymore. If you had kept track, the quotient will have a value of 7. So when you divide 58 by 8, you get a quotient of 7 and a remainder of 2. if you know your multiplication tables you would have known and 8 time 7 is 56 which again means that 8 goes into 58 7 times wholly and leaves a remainder of 2. What has been explained is known as successive subtraction which is what division is. This was a simple case. Suppose you had to divide 1892 by 57. No one knows 57 tables. There is a method called long integer division. It is not possible to illustrate that with the editor we have on this site, but you should seek an elder person or a teacher to show you the methodology and intricacies of long division.