What are some everyday situations in which you need to change fractions to decimals?

1 Answer
M7chael
Oct 7, 2017

Measuring the length, width, and area of your room.

Explanation:

There are many reasons to do this, mine was to calculate how we should split up the rent based on the square footage of our rooms.

If you measure the room with a tape measure, you might get something like 8’3” #xx# 15’5”. You know that eventually we want exact square footage to accurately calculate rent and right now we have inches involved.

Well there are 12 inches in a foot so we could say:

#(8+1/4) xx (15+5/12)#

#33/4 xx 185/12=6105/48# square feet

Now at some point here we would want to convert this into a decimal because we know the total square footage as a decimal and these numbers get ridiculous as fractions.

Even if you converted it to a decimal right away, you are using the fact that inches are one twelfth of a foot.

This is only one example, I would like to hear more.

Related questions
Impact of this question
2673 views around the world
You can reuse this answer
Creative Commons License