On his website andertoons.com, illustrator Mark Anderson has a cartoon in which a boy is handing his teacher an assignment. “To show how well I understand fractions,” he says, “I only did half of my ...

In fourth grade, students focus most on using all four operations - addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division - to solve multi-step word problems involving multi-digit numbers. Fourth-grade ...

Many children never master fractions. When asked whether 12/13 + 7/8 was closest to 1, 2, 19, or 21, only 24% of a nationally representative sample of more than 20,000 US 8th graders answered ...

A year after he started his Ph.D. in mathematics at McGill University, Matt Bowen had a problem. “I took my qualifying exams and did absolutely horribly on them,” he said. Bowen was sure that his ...

Fractions are an essential concept in mathematics used to represent parts of a whole. They express a number that is not whole, breaking down values into smaller, equal parts. Here’s a breakdown of ...

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their ...

Fractions are a notoriously tricky part of elementary math education for many children. Too often teachers struggle to ensure students are grasping the conceptual underpinnings of this complicated ...