Fractions give some people nightmares, but this doesn't have to be you.

Keep watching this video

lesson, and you will come out with a better understanding of fractions. And hopefully, you won't feel
so afraid of them.
We begin with a definition of what fractions are. A fraction simply tells us how many parts of a whole
we have. You can recognize a fraction by the slash that is written between the two numbers. We
have a top number, the numerator, and a bottom number, the denominator. For example, 1/2 is a
fraction. You can write it with a slanted slash like we have or you can write the 1 on top of the 2 with
the slash between the two numbers. The 1 is the numerator, and the 2 is the denominator.
What does this fraction mean? Well, if we picture a pie, the bottom number tells us how many slices
to slice the pie, and the top number tells us how many of those slices we can have. So 1/2 tells us
that we have sliced our pie into two slices, and we can take 1 of those slices. Isn't that half of the
pie? So 1/2 of a pie is half a pie! Now that's a pretty big slice! Top it with whipped cream, and we are
good to go!