Mathematicians needed! Mixed fractions

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Hi! homeschooling mum here ❤️

I would like some information about mixed fractions please 🙂

I was educated in a different country and I never learned about mixed fractions. I did engineering at university! Actually I did engineering at university in the UK!! And I have NEVER EVER used mixed fractions 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️ to me this was an annoying quirk of my calculator....

I understand them well and I can teach them. That's not the problem.

I would like to know is what are they good for?! What do you use them for? What are they going to benefit later on?

Thank you ❤️

Are you asking about the use of mixed fractions or improper fractions? Surely mixed is pretty obvious - a spoon and a half of sugar etc. Improper fractions, more a stepping stone in maths perhaps? Sorry if I'm missing your point though and hopefully someone with more maths knowledge than me will be along!

Yes I agree with first poster. Improper fractions make the maths involved easier than mixed numbers. Without a calculator - while you can use a calculator to do these pupils should be taught how to manipulate/multiple/divide etc without relying on one.

Mixed numbers are culturally used in the UK mostly in the measurement of length.

so on road signs you will see mixed numbers. Also in recipes.

in terms of other countries, the Chinese maths curriculum also teaches them, again in the context of length.

It’s useful when you need to express something that’s not easy in decimals. Thinking about recipes, 1.5 tbsp is easy enough, but how else would you write 2 1/3 tbsp? 7/3 tbsp is confusing and you can’t really do 2.3333333…

@ramonaqueenbee I have never used mixed fractions. I have always only worked with "improper fractions". We don't have that name, it's just fractions

I think I'm starting to understand that it is because of imperial measurements, just like learning the 11 and 12 times tables.

I was just wondering if, besides cooking and measurements, it had any other maths applications. If it helped with certain calculations. I suppose not 😅

Oh I see! That's so interesting.

My maths knowledge isn't advanced enough to know if there is more scope or use for mixed numbers in further maths, and it may be because you're right there isn't much.

Mixed numbers are useful practically when you want a sense of how many whole numbers there are eg. as a previous poster said it would be annoying to have a recipient that required 10/3 tablespoons of whatever. So measurements of all sorts.

Very interesting that this isn't used widely.

In further maths our numbers are imaginary 😉

I was very disappointed to learn that although the numbers are imaginary, you can’t just make them up!

Mixed fractions are perhaps a bit of a throwback. They were used a lot more in practice in pre-decimal times for weights and measures mainly.

There is no functional benefit to mixed fractions. There is one psychological benefit, which is that they make it easier to estimate the value of a fraction to within an integer.

E.g. it's hard to tell where on the number line 78/19 is, but much easier to see that 4 and 2/19ths is a little over 4

Practically, you can think of it as division practice.

Mixed fractions aren't something mathematicians ever use. They are helpful in some practical measurements involving fractions instead of decimals. As others have said, cooking is a great example, especially in the US where almost everything is measured by volume instead of weight.

My daughter who has a learning disability is just beginning to understand decimals and wouldn't be completely confident of what 2.5 meant, but she can measure two and a half teaspoons of vanilla. Likewise, my builder husband might tell one of the labourers to pour in one and a third bags of cement; he wouldn't say 1.33 or 4/3. It helps that it reflects how people talk in daily life.

"Practically, you can think of it as division practice." @Muu9 that's a nice view 😊😊
I get the idea of knowing exactly where the fractions stands with the other natural numbers. I suppose it's nice to have that perspective. Not that my kids seem very excited about mixed fractions...... 😒😒 geometry went down much more smoothly

Surely lots of real life situations?
eg 1 and a half bags of X compost, and 2 and a quarter bags of Y compost and 7 and two thirds bags of Z compost. Is that enough for my flowerbed?
You would add the whole bags and then deal with the fractions. You wouldn't want to turn everything into improper fractions first.