Numbers can be represented in a variety of ways including percentages, decimals, and fractions. The ability to convert any number from one format to another is an important math skill to have. These skills are typically thought in fifth grade math and require an understanding of place values and Greatest Common Factor (GCF).
In this article, we teach those skills step by step while demonstrating how to convert decimal 2.872 into a fraction.
Step 1:
First, we write 2.872 asStep 2:
Next, we multiply both the numerator and denominator by 10 for each digit after the decimal point. Remember the numerator is the top part of the fraction and the denominator is the bottom part!Step 3:
Next, we find the Greatest Common Factor (GCF) for 2872 and 1000. A factor is a number that divides into another number without any remainder.Step 4:
For the last step we reduce the fraction. This just means writing the fraction in the simplest way. To do this we divide both the numerator and denominator by the GCF value we determined in step 3.Learn how a variety of decimals are represented as a fraction.
Practice makes perfect! Gain experience converting decimals into fractions with these examples: