fosstodon.org is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
Fosstodon is an invite only Mastodon instance that is open to those who are interested in technology; particularly free & open source software. If you wish to join, contact us for an invite.

Administered by:

Server stats:

11K
active users

@actuallyautistic #actuallyautistic Somehow got into an argument earlier about fractions with my parents, especially the fraction 15/16. I said that 7.5/8 is the same thing as 15/16, because they can be converted to each other by multiplying or dividing the numerator and denominator by 2.

My mom basically said, no, that's not right because it's not a "proper fraction" which doesn't make sense to me. The math checks out, and numerators can have decimal integers. Is there something I'm missing?

Moz

@chevalier26 @actuallyautistic "proper fraction" is a mathematical term too: mathsisfun.com/proper-fraction (the rest are improper fractions. No, really).

Typically people either use decimals or fractions, not both. The combo is kind of weird because if you're going to use decimals just use decimals. 3.5/5 or 0.7... you might as well just use the latter.

The real fun is prime denominators because that tweaks people who use imperial units. It's not 15/32nds of a furlong, it's 8/17ths.

www.mathsisfun.comProper FractionsSee how the top number is smaller than the bottom number in each example? That makes it a Proper Fraction. ... More Examples (interactive)

@moz @actuallyautistic Yeah I get that; actually I think that's what threw my parents off. I was used to seeing those kinds of fractions on school assignments, and even school grades (e.g., 89.5 out of 100 points), and it never really crossed my mind that 7.5/8 was "weird," since I was just converting it to a decimal, 0.9375.

@moz @actuallyautistic I guess, really, the way to do this would not be 7.5/8, but instead (7 1/2)/8. That makes just as much sense in my head but keeps everything uniform.