Sweet and delectable or solid and savory, there’s just something wonderful about that flaky pie goodness that we can’t deny. And an added plus: you can practice nifty math skills while dishing it! Our team has done exactly that for today’s Word Problem Wednesday. See if you can come up with the answer and check back tomorrow for the solution!
Anna, Brayden, and Caleb have three equally sized pies. Anna ate four fifths of her pie. Brayden ate eight ninths of his pie. Caleb ate nine tenths of his pie. Who has the most pie left over?
Solution: Notice that the numerator in each fraction is one less than the denominator. That means we can solve this problem by thinking of the denomination as the size of the slices; each person ate all but one slice. Since fifths are bigger than ninths and ninths are bigger than tenths, that means that the person with a fifth of a pie—Anna—has the most left over.
How did you solve the problem? Did your solution match ours?
(Ahem, with all of this yummy pie talk, we have just one follow up question: how did Anna, Brayden and Caleb not eat ALL of the pie??? *nom nom*)
