For a fraction of the form , the number in front of the division () is the numerator. The number after the division () is the denominator.
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A positive fraction () is less than as long as the numerator is smaller than the denominator (that is, .) The reason is that as long as :
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For example, in the fraction , is the numerator while is the denominator. Both the numerator and the denominator are positive, while the numerator is smaller than the denominator . Therefore, would be less than .