mathwork question

Question

I need help with this question...... Josh splits 7/8 pounds of candy among 6 people. what is the unit rate in pounds per person

Answer 1

Hi Kayla,

Your first task is to figure out whether this question requires you to add, subtract, multiply, or divide. Since we are splitting something equally into groups, that is a clue that this is a division problem.

Let's do an example with different quantities so that I don't give away the answer: Joanne splits 5/6 pounds of candy among 4 people. What is the unit rate in pounds per person?

We need to divide 5/6 pounds of candy equally among 4 people. Mathematically that will look like this:

5/6 ÷ 4

When working with fractions, dividing is the same as multiplying by the reciprocal, so our multiplication problem to solve is:

5/6 × 1/4

If I multiply the numerator times the numerator and the denominator times the denominator, my product is

5/24

The unit rate is 5/24 lb per person.

Follow the same steps to solve the original problem that you posted here:

1) Write your division problem

2) Multiply by the reciprocal

3) Find the unit rate

Good luck!