1.3 A) Introduction
An example of a fraction is:
We can write the fraction 1/5 as 1 ÷ 5 (the line in the fraction means divide). The top of a fraction is known as the numerator, and the bottom of a fraction is known as the denominator. With the fraction 1/5, the numerator is 1 and the denominator is 5.
We can also think about fractions by having a whole (which has a value of 1) and dividing the whole into the value for the denominator number of parts. For the fraction 1/5, the denominator was 5, so we would divide our whole into 5 parts.
Each part of the above whole represents 1/5 of the whole. On the above block, one fifth or 1/5 of the block has been shaded green.
Let’s now suppose that our fraction was 3/5.
As the denominator of the fraction is 5, the block that represents a whole (1) will be divided into 5 sections (exactly the same as before). The numerator for the fraction 3/5 is 3, and this means that we can represent the fraction 3/5 by shading 3 out of the 5 parts of the block. These 3 parts of block have been shaded blue.
A fraction that has a numerator that is smaller than the denominator is known as a proper fraction. The two fractions below are proper fractions: