Question

I bought one dozen bananas and ate five of them. What fraction of the total number of bananas was left?

Answer 1

Hint: Here, we need to write the number of bananas left, in terms of a fraction. First, we will find the number of bananas left. Then, we will express the number of bananas left as a fraction of the total number of bananas. A fraction is a number which represents a part of a group, written as \[\dfrac{a}{b}\].

Complete step-by-step answer:
The number of bananas bought is one dozen.
One dozen is equal to 12.
Therefore, we get the total number of bananas bought as 12.
Now, the number of bananas eaten is 5.
We can find the number of bananas left by deducting the number of bananas eaten from the total number of bananas bought.
Thus, we get
Number of bananas left \[ = 12 - 5 = 7\]
Now, we will express the number of bananas left as a fraction.
A fraction is a number which represents a part of a group. It is written as \[\dfrac{a}{b}\], where \[a\] is called the numerator and \[b\] is called the denominator. The group is divided into \[b\] equal parts. The fraction \[\dfrac{a}{b}\] represents \[a\] part out of \[b\] equal parts of the group.
The number of bananas left is 7 and the total number of bananas bought is 12.
Therefore, we can express the number of bananas left as a fraction by taking the numerator as 7 and the denominator as 12.
Therefore, the number of bananas left can be written as the fraction \[\dfrac{7}{{12}}\].
Since 7 and 12 are co-prime numbers, we cannot simplify the fraction further.
Thus, the fraction of the number of bananas left is \[\dfrac{7}{{12}}\].

Note: We used the term co-prime numbers in the solution.
Two numbers are called co-prime numbers if they do not share a common factor other than 1. For example, the factors of 7 are 1 and 7. The factors of 12 are 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 12. We can observe that 7 and 12 do not have any common factor other than 1. Therefore, 7 and 12 are co-prime numbers.