Answer: For 4/3, the denominator is 3. Improper fraction. This is a fraction where the numerator is greater than the denominator. Mixed number. This is a way of expressing an improper fraction by simplifying it to whole units and a smaller overall fraction.
Step-by-step explanation:
Before we begin, let's revisit some basic fraction terms so you understand exactly what we're dealing with here:
Numerator. This is the number above the fraction line. For 4/3, the numerator is 4.
Denominator. This is the number below the fraction line. For 4/3, the denominator is 3.
Improper fraction. This is a fraction where the numerator is greater than the denominator.
Mixed number. This is a way of expressing an improper fraction by simplifying it to whole units and a smaller overall fraction. It's an integer (whole number) and a proper fraction.
Now let's go through the steps needed to convert 4/3 to a mixed number.
Step 1: Find the whole number
We first want to find the whole number, and to do this we divide the numerator by the denominator. Since we are only interested in whole numbers, we ignore any numbers to the right of the decimal point.
4/3= 1.3333333333333 = 1
Now that we have our whole number for the mixed fraction, we need to find our new numerator for the fraction part of the mixed number.
Step 2: Get the new numerator
To work this out we'll use the whole number we calculated in step one (1) and multiply it by the original denominator (3). The result of that multiplication is then subtracted from the original numerator:
4 - (3 x 1) = 1
Step 3: Our mixed fraction
We've now simplified 4/3 to a mixed number. To see it, we just need to put the whole number together with our new numerator and original denominator:
1
1
3
Step 4: Simplifying our fraction
In this case, our fraction (1/3) can be simplified down further. In order to do that, we need to calculate the GCF (greatest common factor) of those two numbers. You can use our handy GCF calculator to work this out yourself if you want to. We already did that, and the GCF of 1 and 3 is 1.
We can now divide both the new numerator and the denominator by 1 to simplify this fraction down to its lowest terms.
1/1 = 1
3/1 = 3
When we put that together, we can see that our complete answer is:
1
1
3
Hopefully this tutorial has helped you to understand how to convert any improper fraction you have into a mixed fraction, complete with a whole number and a proper fraction. You're free to use our calculator below to work out more, but do try and learn how to do it yourself. It's more fun than it seems, I promise!
