When I was in the 7th grade, my teacher, Mrs. D, taught us a neat little trick. When you come across the word “of” in a story problem in math, 9 times out of 10, it means the multiplication sign. Then you can simply rewrite the story problem as a math problem, substituting × for “of” where appropriate.
I love using this simple rule, because I really hated doing story problems. But I have just one question. If “×” equals “of”, what does the division sign (i.e., ÷) always equal?
:):)
It can be “per”, sometimes “in”, sometimes “between” or “among”.
I assume that you mean like -
“What is half of a quarter?” = ½ x ¼ = ⅛
The nearest I can think is ‘shared’ -
“what is one, shared among four?” = 1 ÷ 4 = ¼
I won’t say always, but “out of” usually means division. For example, “4 out of 5 dentists” would mean 4 ÷ 5 , which is 0.8 or 80%. Another word for division is “per”. For example, “20 parts per million” is 20 ÷ 1,000,000 which is 0.00002, and “75 per cent” is 75 ÷ 100 (because “cent”, short for “centum”, is Latin for 100) and 75 ÷ 100 is 0.75 or 3/4.
That’d be the irony, Bob…