How do you convert a fraction to a decimal?

2 Answers
Apr 11, 2016

("numerator")/("denominator")

e.g. 1/10=0.1

Apr 11, 2016

By long division.

Explanation:

Ultimately you can find a decimal expansion for any fraction of the form a/b for integers a and b by long division.

For example, consider 186/7:

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Eventually the remainders in long division will repeat. In this example, the remainder starts to repeat with the value 4 occurring for the second time.

That means that the quotient will start to repeat too and we find:

186/7 = 26.57142857142857142857...

which can be written:

186/7 = 26.bar(571428)

The bar over the sequence 571428 indicates the repeating section.