2FRACTIONS
Throughout history, many cultures, including the Egyptians, Greeks, Indians, Muslims, Chinese, and Romans, worked with quantities that are not integers. Over time, they developed the idea of fractions. Today, fractions are used throughout math and science. Understanding how fractions behave is critical to being successful in algebra. We find that to succeed in algebra, students don't just need to know how to work with fractions but also why these rules work.
2.1 Basic Operations
To understand fractions, we start by dividing a quantity into equal parts. For example, if we divide a rectangular pizza into 8 slices, each slice represents (pronounced “one-eighth” or “one over eight”) of the rectangle (Figure 2.1):
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