Lisa and Scotty sit down to eat dinner. They cut several pieces of hamburger cornbread pie for themselves and end up with 7/16 of the pie left. If Lisa ate 1/4 of the whole pie, how much did Scotty eat?
Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? If you can believe it, Scotty and I sat staring at our hamburger casserole tonight, trying to figure out mathematically how much we ate...
"We ate a lot of food."
"We finished off more than half the dish."
"Yeah, I'd say about 3/5."
"How much would I have eaten if you had a little bit more than me?"
"Well, if we ate 3/5 and I had more, then I had about, lets see, what's less than 3/5?"
Conversation went on like this for at least 5 or 6 minutes, trying to find common denominators, adding and multiplying fractions in our heads. Scotty told me that he used to teach his kids in class that "Fractions are our friends", inspired by his old math teacher Larry Winckles. How are fractions our friends? I ask. Because then you can answer important questions like these: how much casserole did we eat?
I'm not convinced.
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5 comments:
OK - that makes it sound like Scotty only ate 3/16..... if there are 9/16ths left and Lisa ate 4/16ths, then she ate more than Scotty. You people need to get out more.
Good Ole Mr. Winckles!
Scott you should be able to do these problems in your sleep. Just like we did in Mr. Winckles Algebra class when we would be upset that we only got a 115%. Who had the higher average? I think we got in trouble for goofing off though.
-Eric
Fractions definitely are not my friends. In fact, numbers in general and I do not get along well. Coty is always coming up with funny, quirky number things. I just want to know, did you have room left for dessert?
sounds like Annette is right. Scotty only ate 3/16, since that plus Lisa's hefty 4/16 and the leftover 9/16 add up to 16/16ths. what a fun night! :) i bet you both had a good laugh at yourselves for this one.
Extra credit to Annette for catching my mistake! I meant to say we ate 9/16, therefore there was 7/16 left...how much did Scotty eat? (more than me!)
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