Sunday, June 5, 2011

A Few Thoughts About Operations With Decimals






Lately, our class work has centered on getting kids ready for middle school standards. In doing so, we have started working on multiplying numbers that include decimals.

I have posed many questions like: "How much would it cost to purchase 7.3 lbs. of nails @ $11.29?


I have encouraged students to do a few things to insure that their answers make sense, which roughly translates into getting the decimal located in the correct position. First, I have asked that students make an estimate that uses only whole numbers. In the case of the nails, we would round 7.3 to 7, and we would round $11.29 down to $11. So our estimate would be $77. We know this estimate is a bit low as we rounded both numbers down, but it is plenty good to let us know where to place the decimal. I have also encouraged students to think about the problem as if it was written as a mixed number times another mixed number. If they do so, it is easy to think about the tenths being multiplied by hundredths, and that has to produce a denominator of thousandths. That is what your math teacher did NOT tell you when he/she said to count up the digits to the right of the decimal in the problem and match that number in the answer.


So, our estimate is $77, and the multiplication of 73 X 1129 yields a product of 82417. So it should be pretty obvious that the only place to put the decimal so that you get an answer close to $77 is after the two...$82.417, and since we have no coin worth a thousandth of a dollar, we round to the nearest hundredth and get $82.42 .

Trying to put the math in front of the "
tricks",

T-Cubed