Monday, October 29, 2012

Converting Fractions to Decimals

How to Convert Fractions to Decimals
The manual method to convert Fraction to Decimal is by dividing the numerator with the denominator using the long division method for instance, 4/5 here 4 is divided by 5 using the long division method, 4 is a number less than 5 and hence we start with a decimal point in the numerator to make 4 -> 40. Now that the number is 40 using the decimal point we can divide 40 with 5 as 5 x 8 = 40, so the quotient would be 0.8 which is the decimal form of 4/5. Another method used in converting Fractions to Decimals manually is to,
find the number which when multiplied with the denominator gives a multiple of 10.
Once the number is found both the numerator and the denominator is multiplied with that number
The numerator is written with an appropriate placement of the decimal point according to the multiple of 10 in the denominator
For example, 4/5 fraction to decimal first we find the number which when multiplied with 5 gives a multiple of 10. 20 times 5 is equal to 100, so the required number is 20. Now the numerator and the denominator both are multiplied with 20 which gives, 4x20/5x20=80/100, the denominator being 100 the decimal point has to be placed two places towards left from the right which gives .80 or 0.8

When we Convert Fraction to Decimal at times we might not be able to make the denominator a multiple of 10 in such cases an approximate decimal is calculated by multiplying the denominator which  gives the nearest value of multiple of 10, for instance 1/3 and 2/3 fractions to Decimals would be multiplied with 333 in the numerator and denominator which gives 333/999 and 666/999 and the decimal point is placed 3 places towards left from the right as 999 is near to 1000 which has three zeroes, so the approximate decimals are 0.333 and 0.666, the accuracy is only till three decimal places.

To convert Fraction to Decimal using a long division can be given as follows, 2/3 would be 2 divided by 3
2 is less than 3 and hence cannot be divided.  In such case a decimal point is used to make 2,  20. 20 when divided by 3 would be a repeated decimal of 6 which is written as 0.66666…. Rounding of the decimal is done if required.


                                   0.666…  (Goes on)
                                3|20
                                  - 18
                                      20
                                    - 18
                                       20
                                     - 18
                                         2  

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