Question

Alex opens a 1-pint container of orange butter. He spreads 1/16of the butter on his bread. The he divides the rest of the butter into 3/4-pint containers.how many 3/4-pint containers is he able to fill?

Answer 1

One pint can fill only a single 3/4-pint container, even before anybody takes away any of the full pint.

Answer 2

The first thing to do is to make the denominators of the fractions the same: 
16 / 4 = 4.  4 X 3 = 12. 
12/16. 

16 / 1 = 16.  16 X 1 = 16
16/16

Now you write this out as a fraction equation: 
(16/16 - 1/16) / 12/16
15/16 / 12/16

Since all you need to know is the whole number, you can easily tell that 15 / 12 is less than 2.  

Therefore, Alex is able to fill one 3/4-point containers with orange butter.