I understand the rules about adding fractions but I'm trying to visualize it and that's where the confusion sets in.

Say I have 1/4 + 1/4, sure if you follow the rules you end up with 2/4 or 50%, but what if you took the same problem and showed it with two pizzas with slices becoming the fraction.

You would get 2/8, two out of 8 slices that's been taken ,1 from each pizza with 6 slices remaining or 25% taken, so my question is are fraction set up to not allow comparison of two different fractions and instead comparison's are only allowed with two parts of the same whole?

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Originally Posted by TheGuyg7

I understand the rules about adding fractions but i'm trying to visualize it and that's where the confusion sets in.

Say i have 1/4 + 1/4, sure if you follow the rules you end up with 2/4 or 50%, but what if you took the same problem and showed it with two pizzas with slices becoming the fraction.

You would get 2/8, two out of 8 slices that's been TAKEN ,1 from each pizza with 6 slices remaining or 25% TAKEN, so my question is are fraction set up to not allow comparison of two different fractions and instead comparison's are only allowed with two parts of the same whole?

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Oh... what I mean't by TAKEN was not by subtraction but adding it to my plate and my plate is the sum which is 25% of both pizzas, this only leaves 6 slices remaining.

Do you mean that the fractions you need to compare must have the same denominator?

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Originally Posted by teacherjenn4

Do you mean that the fractions you need to compare must have the same denominator?

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Yea, having the same denominator doesn't take into account of all the slices but instead just adds numerators to equal a whole.

2/4 + 2/4 = 4/4 so all that you are doing in fractions is just adding the numerator's to create a whole but in real life you wouldn't forget what you left behind and not show it into your answer, E.G 4 slices were left behind and 4 slices were added to a new whole, so I'm just suppose to forget about the 4 slices left behind and just focus on the answer?

If I understand your example, you have two pizzas that are each cut into 8 slices - for 16 slices total. You take 2 slices from each, leaving 6 slices each. So on your plate you now have 4 slices, which are 4/16 = 1/4 of whole, and in the pizza bixes you have a total of 12 slices remaining, or 12/16 = 3/4 of the whole. Interestingly each box individually has remaining 6/8 = 3/4 of what they started with.

Now suppose you had taken 3 slices from one pizza and 1 slice from the other. You still have taken 1/4 of the whole, leaving 3/4 left. But one pizza box has 5 slices (5/8) and the other has 7 slices (7/8). Altogether you have 12/16 = 3/4 left in the boxes.