Answer: Few phrases make me cringe the way I do when I hear, “Ours is not to reason why; just invert and multiply.” A student’s job in math class is to reason, and a teacher’s job is to help the students see that math makes sense. Understanding division of fractions is complicated, bringing together many ideas that build up to a method that makes sense, especially in the tricky case of a fraction divided by a fraction. Liping Ma writes about research asking teachers to explain what it means to divide by a fraction. Most U.S. teachers were startled to find how difficult this was for them. What if we start with the simpler case of a whole number divided by a fraction?
