Lesson video

Hi, I'm Mr. Chan.

And in this lesson, we're going to learn about comparing two fractions.

Let's compare the two fractions, 5/7 and 2/7.

So here we have two fraction models split up into seven parts to represent sevenths.

The first fraction model has five parts shaded in to represent 5/7.

And the second fraction model below it has two parts shaded in to represent 2/7.

We can quite clearly see that 5/7 is greater than 2/7.

So that's what we would write.

If we were to put this into a mathematical statement, we can write that like this, using the greater than symbol.

Here's some questions for you to try.

Pause the video to complete the task.

Resume the video once you're finished.

Here are the answers.

In this question, you're asked to shade in two fractions as shown and then compare them using the inequality symbols.

Once you've shaded them in, you quite clearly see that 3/8 is less than 5/8.

Here's another couple of examples we can look up when comparing fractions.

So in first example, we're comparing 4/9 and 8/9.

Notice we have the same denominator at ninths, and we can compare how many parts are shaded in simply by looking at the numerators.

Four is less than eight.

So what we can say is 4/9 is less than 8/9.

And we would write that using the less than symbol.

Second example with comparing 5/10 with 4/10.

Notice again that the denominator is 10.

They're both 10s.

So it's a simple case of comparing the numerator parts.

5/10 would have five parts shaded in and 4/10 would have four parts shaded in.

And in this example, we can clearly say that 5/10 is greater than 4/10.

Here's some more questions for you to try.

Pause the video to complete your task.

Resume the video once you're finished.

Here are the answers.

In this question.

you'll see that you're comparing two fractions where all of the denominators are the same as each of them.

So for example in question A, you're comparing 1/7 with 3/7.

Because the whole has been split up into the same number of parts, 1/7 would be less than 3/7.

When you're comparing fractions with the same denominator, you'll notice you're really just comparing the numerators.

Let's look at comparing two fractions where the denominators are not the same.

Well, we can use equivalent fractions to deal with that.

And 2/3, we can write as ninths as such.

We can write 2/3 being equivalent to 6/9, and we know how to compare fractions now that have the same denominator.

We just look at the numerators, and we can clearly see that 6/9 would be less than 7/9.

So we can put that in a mathematical statement like this.

2/3 is less than 7/9.

Here's some questions for you to try using that method we've just discussed.

Pause the video to complete your task.

Resume the video once you're finished.

Here are the answers.

In this question, you're comparing fractions with different denominators.

So one method is to create equivalent fractions with the same denominator.

So for example in part A, 5/7 I will create an equivalent fraction in fourteenths by multiplying the numerator and denominator by two.

That would give me a fraction 10/14, which is clearly greater than 9/14.

I hope you got all those correct.

Here's a question for you to try.

Pause the video to complete the task.

Resumed the video once you're finished.

In this question, we're told that Sue and Amir each have a chocolate bar, where Sue eats 2/7 of her chocolate bar and Amir eats 1/3.

We're asked who ate the greatest part.

So we have to compare the fraction 2/7 with 1/3.

And we do that by creating equivalent fractions with 21 as a denominator.

2/7 as you can see equals 6/21 and 1/3 equals 7/21.

So comparing those two fractions, we can see that 2/7 is less than 1/3.

Therefore Amir ate the greatest part.

That's all for this lesson.

Thanks for watching.