Question

What is `10 -: 0.25`?

Answer 1

`40`

Explanation:

`"consider the fractional equivalent of "0.25`

`"that is "0.25=1/4`

`"now "10-:1/4`

`"change division to multiplication and turn the fraction"`
`"upside down"`

`rArr10/1xx4/1=10xx4=40`

Answer 2

`10-:0.25 = 40`.

Explanation:

Division questions like `12-:4` can be thought of as "how many times does 4 go into 12? Or, "if I were to break $12 into pieces, where each piece is $4, how many pieces will I get?"

You can also think of a division question like a multiplication question instead. If we seek an answer to `12 -: 4`, that's the same thing as asking, "4 times what gives me 12".

The same logic applies to division questions with decimals. For this question, we pretend we have $10.00, and we want to break it up into pieces, where each piece is $0.25. In other words, we're turning $10 into quarters, and asking how many quarters we would get for ten dollars.

Since there are 4 quarters in one dollar, and we have ten dollars, we multiply the 4 by 10 to get an answer of 40 quarters.

Bonus:

Divisions that involve fractions can be rephrased as multiplications quite easily. A question like `6-:1/3` is the same as `6xx3`. Just as before, this is because we are dividing 6 into pieces, where each piece is `1/3`. Since each whole can be made into 3 thirds, and we have 6 wholes, we multiply 6 by 3 to get our answer.

Since `0.25` is the same as `1/4`, the original question can be rewritten as `10-:1/4`, which is the same as `10 xx 4`, and this is 40.