What would our world be like without fractions? Our language would certainly change!

You could never tell a friend to break a cookie in "half" to share with you. You could only tell them to break it into two pieces. A glass containing water could never be described as "half full." How could you describe this glass? There would be no such thing as "half past the hour" with timekeeping. You could never say you are "halfway" there when traveling.

Obviously, fractions are truly an important part of our language. They are equally important for mathematics.

Some people feel it is very hard to work with fractions. Here are some helpful hints to make fractions easier to understand.

Fractions were used by many early civilizations. This included the Babylonians, Chinese, Egyptians, Greeks, and Hindus (in India). Many times, they only used fractions for very specific mathematical equations. Today, fractions are a very important part of the study of mathematics.

A fraction can be written as . N stands for numerator (always the number on top of the line). D is the denominator (always on bottom). An important point to remember is that the denominator can never be zero.

Adding fractions is not difficult. If two fractions have the same denominator, then it is an easy math problem. In that case, you only need to add the numerators.

Subtracting the same fractions can be just as easy if both fractions have the same denominator.

It is only slightly more difficult when the denominators are different.

You must find the "least common denominator" by rewriting both fractions so they have the same denominator. You must create equivalent fractions. To do this, you can multiply your denominators. 3 X 5 = 15 This means that 15 is your new "least common denominator." The fraction now becomes .

How does this happen? Multiply the denominator (3) and numerator (1) both by the second denominator (5). When you multiply both the denominator and numerator by the same number you don't change the value of the fraction and you wouldn't want to do that.

Your second fraction must also be multiplied - in this case, times 3 (since 5 X 3 = 15).

Now, we are able to add the fractions since they both have the same denominator.

Those of us at KSNN are confident you can do well when you work with fractions. We aren't just "half sure" you will do well - we have "full" confidence in what you can do with fractions!