Question
Dear Mitch,
Do you know a quick way to figure out how many cookies each person should get if you have to divide up a certain number of cookies fairly for a different amount of people?
(Like if you have 5 cookies and 3 people, how do you do that fast?)
Take care,
Anthony
Answer
Dear Anthony,
Yes, I do know a quick way to do that procedure.
You take the number of the items you are handing out (here, cookies), and you write that number down on a piece of paper.
Then you draw a little horizontal line under that number. Then you put the number of people who will be sharing equally under that little horizontal line.
You now have a fraction.
For example, 6 cookies divided up among three people should look like this:
6/3.
Well, one of the ways to read the line between the top part of a fraction and bottom part is "divided by". And so you simply have 6 divided by 3 which equals 2.
Each person would get 2 cookies.
This same method works even when the answer isn't so neat (in other words, when the answer has a remainder.)
So, 5 cookies divided by 2 people =
5/2 = 2 1/2.
Each person would get two-and-a-half cookies.
And it also works when there are more people than cookies.
3 cookies divided up among 4 people =
3/4 =
3/4 cookie per person.
Each of the four people would get 3/4 of a cookie.
Hope this helps,
Mitch