What do you get when you add a whole number like 1, 2, 3, or anything else to one of the good old-fashioned proper fractions that you’ve come to know-and-love such as 1/2 or 1/3? You get what’s called a mixed fraction. What exactly do mixed fractions look like? How can you convert them into normal everyday fractions? And when do you need to bother doing so? Stay tuned because those are exactly the questions we’ll be answering today.
Review: Proper and Improper Fractions
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As we’ve seen, fractions come in a number of different flavors. The typical kind that you’re used to dealing with on an everyday basis—the vanilla flavored guys—are called “proper fractions.” A fraction is dubbed “proper” if its numerator is smaller than its denominator. So 1/2, 2/3, and 3/4 are all proper fractions. On the other hand, the more exotically flavored fractional beasties are numbers like 3/2, 4/3, and 27/11 whose numerators are all greater than their denominators. What are these not-so-proper guys called? Rather logically, fractions that fall into this camp are called “improper fractions.”
What do you get when you add a whole number like 1, 2, 3, or anything else to one of the good old-fashioned proper fractions that you’ve come to know-and-love such as 1/2 or 1/3? You get what’s called a mixed fraction. What exactly do mixed fractions look like? How can you convert them into normal everyday fractions? And when do you need to bother doing so? Stay tuned because those are exactly the questions we’ll be answering today. Review: Proper and Improper Fractions As we’ve seen, fractions come in a number of different flavors. The typical kind that you’re used to dealing with on an everyday basis—the vanilla flavored guys—are called “proper fractions.” A fraction is dubbed “proper” if its numerator is smaller than its denominator. So 1/2, 2/3, and 3/4 are all proper fractions. On the other hand, the more exotically flavored fractional beasties are numbers like 3/2, 4/3, and 27/11 whose numerators are all greater than their denominators. What are these not-so-proper guys called? Rather logically, fractions that fall into this camp are called “improper fractions.”