Question

Out of 400 trees in a park, 280 are deciduous. What fraction of number of trees in the park are deciduous?

Answer 1

`280/400=7/10`

Explanation:

Let's first talk about what a fraction can show, and I'll start by talking about pizza.

Let's say we have a pizza that has 8 slices and I eat 3 of them. I can write:

`"my slices of pizza"/"total amount of pizza"=3/8`

We can do the same thing with the trees in the park.

`"trees in the park that are deciduous"/"total number of trees in the park"=280/400`

And technically we could stop here - we have a fraction. However, often times we want to express the fraction in lowest possible terms. To do that, we take out forms of the number 1 that are part of the bigger fraction:

`280/400=(28xxcancel10)/(40xxcancel10)=(7xxcancel4)/(10xxcancel4)=7/10`