Matt has 16 fish in his tank.He says 3/5 are red and 7/10 are yellow. Is this reasonable? Explain

Question

Please help and old mom

Answer 1

Hi Susan,

You asked whether it would be reasonable to describe 3/5 of 16 fish as red and 7/10 as yellow.

Here's a quick way of thinking about it: Sixteen is not divisible by 5 or 10. Before we do any arithmetic, we can tell that 3/5 of 16 and 7/10 of 16 will not be whole numbers. Unlike a pizza or a yard of fabric, we don't usually talk about a living fish in quantities less than one whole, so Matt's description does not sound reasonable.

If you were to do the arithmetic, it would look like this:

3/5 × 16/1 = 48/5 = 9 3/5 red fish

7/10 x 16/1 = 112/10 = 11 2/10 = 11 1/5 yellow fish