Can you help me explain to my son the importance of learning fractions?

Question

I posted this in another category too, but thought I'd try here as well. He complains that he doesn't need to learn fractions because he's never going to use them in the "real world." I told him fractions are used every day in the real world and he wanted some examples. I said you use fractions when you're cooking, he said he's never going to cook and if he does he'll use a measuring cup. So I told him that if he ever wants to do woodworking or metalwork he'll have to use fractions. He said, yeah, that's my dream job. I said you work with fractions when you talk about your gas tank (I have a quarter tank of gas) he says he only needs to know quarter, half, three quarters and full. I said you work with fractions when you work with money. He says I'll never have to know what 3/8 of a dollar is. What the heck? How can I explain to him the need for fractions? I'm beginning to wonder myself if it's needed at all.

Answer 1

Find out what his 'dream job' is and show him how fractions will be used in that occupation.

Show him how fractions are used in calculating fuel mileage in his car

Answer 2

How about a nice simple answer? He has to learn it otherwise he will not qualify to receive a high school diploma and will really get a dream job of working in a factory pushing buttons for up to 10 bucks an hour unless he is there for 10 years. thats roughly 20k a year. if he were to rent an apartment and spend a min of 600 a year that would be 9/25 of his salary BEFORE taxes. lets say he needs a car to get to work and uses a gallon of gas a day, he works 5 days a week. Thats $15 a week for gas. Thats about 1/50 of his salary BEFORE taxes. so far thats 19/50. then he needs to eat. figure a min of $15 a day since he wont be cooking. Thats 27% of his salary BEFORE taxes. btw he only makes about 16k after taxes...so far hes spent 13/20 of his salary again BEFORE the taxes. Now he also needs insurance on his car if he is going to be driving it. so lets say min insurance until hes mid 20s is about 1200 a year. so thats 71/100 of his salary. how about utilities for his apartment. we will low ball this at 100 a month. so thats 77/100 of his salary. o now lets not forget taxes which is 25/100 of his salary (1/4) roughly. that makes 102/100. so each year he will owe 100 dollars which may not seem to be alot but then again he would be living in a terrible apartment and would not be able to spend money on toilet paper or soap or other daily things. Good luck spending the money you dont have. Theres some fractions for you. You can show him even more in depth like Dr. Huxtable with his son from the Cosby show haha Billy Cosby keeps taking away the money and poor little Theo thinks he will ride a moped to work lol.

Answer 3

Give him 100th of a Dollar and ask him if that's all he's worth.

You need fractions to bend a straight line to turn it into a curve. Mother Earth is made up of fractions. All financial  operations work on fractions.

Look - if he doesn't want to learn fractions then at least make sure he knows his multiplication tables. Blackmail him, pay him, buy him a car for he will never be able to repay you if he learns to memorize his tables. he will always be in debt for memorizing this most common of all tables.

Answer 4

Whether there's a utility or not is beside the point. There are all kinds of things we learn in school simply to develop our brain power and understanding of the world, not because we will necessarily use that information or those specific skills later on.

He needs to learn fractions as it helps develop good logical thinking and is absolutely vital to success in higher math. It also is just part of developing a better understanding of numbers and how they're all connected. It's about being educated, having a certain amount of knowledge and skill, regardless of whether you will use it or not. Which you have no way of knowing as a child.

What your son is doing is trying to rationalize his desire to not study something he is finding difficult. They are excuses, not reasons. Find a good resource, like Key to Fractions, to help him with it and once he is confident with them, he won't balk at learning it anymore. DON'T get into arguments or discussions with him about why it's important.

As for actual everyday life importance, I've used fractions a lot when cooking: doubling recipes or even doing something like 1.5 times a recipe because I didn't have enough of a particular ingredient to double it; understanding how fractions work is necessary to work out ratios and figuring out better buys. There are also plenty of jobs out there that use fractions (scientists, business people, lots of tech jobs and more). There are probably plenty of things we use our fraction skills for that we don't even think about simply because we don't need to write it all down to work it out.

Answer 5

It's not really ALL that important - in my opinion - but explain to him the importance of education in general - math does not only teach you numbers but critical thinking that is VITAL in the "real world" - Fractions is seen in any profession involving math or science - fractions are involved with stock, bonds, wallstreet....they are involved in credit cards (following fractions come percentages)...etc. To make fractions interesting why don't you google some "fun" activities and practice them with your child - involve baseball, basketball, pizza..etc. His room is made up of fractions. Give him an incentive - give him a home-made "challenge" 3x a week and a certain prize for "surpassing" such challenge - use your imagination - instead of explaining to him with words, use your actions =)

Answer 6

Tell him you don't want him to grow up crippled by his lack of knowledge. It WILL bite him in the butt that he doesn't know it, if he never learns it. One day he will be at a restauraunt and will need to calculate the proper tip (15 %!), or his boss at work will want him to show him some productivity stats, or he will want to go to college, and won't have the basic math skills he needs to pass the classes! He may think now that whatever he wants to do will not involve math, but if he never learns it, believe me he will find himself wishing at times he did know it, and not being able to do things he would like to. Just a couple of semesters ago, I was taking my remedial Algebra class in College, thinking this was stuff I'd never need, and a few days later I was at work (I'm a hairdresser), and had to put on this dry erase board certain statistics about stylist productivity (because I had just been promoted to Manager). I was expected to do this as manager, and if I couldn't do it, it would say to the higher ups that I am not ready for my new position. The kind of math I had to do was what I had just learned in my College class! I am a hairdresser! Why would I ever think I would need algebra? But I did, and it would have handicapped me if I didn't know it.

Answer 7

Once you find out what he wants to do in life, look at the different uses of fractions. Wood work, uses plenty of fractions as everything from the thickness of a cut with a radial arm saw, is in fractions.

Medical, uses fractions and math to calculate drug doses.

Computers, uses math, fractions and such, for programing, designing games, and even repairing them.

Banking, uses lots of math to include fractions. Even jobs like car salesman, working the counter at a store, uses fractions and math.

Law Enforcement uses math and fractions daily.

As a kid growing up, I hated math and felt it was a waste. As an adult, had to have some classes to get me up to speed to pass civil service exams, exams for advancement in my field and for college classes to improve my skills.

Answer 8

Does he ever want to own a home?  I'm not a woodworker, but I do use wood and metalworking all of the time when I want to avoid paying a handyman to do repairs.  

As for cooking, what if he wants to impress a girl and cook a meal for her, but the recipes are all to feed 4 people?  He'll have to learn to cut them in half.  What if it's for 6 people, then he needs to cut it by 2/3.

I go out to eat with friends all of the time and we divide the check.  Plus, we need to figure out a tip.

My wife goes to the store and there is a 50% off sale, then a tag that says to take another 25% off.  Don't say a cash register will do it, because I've worked in store where they've broken and we still need to stay open.

Figuring out your taxes, unless you want to pay an accountant all of the time.

I referee football and I need to figure out "half the distance to the goal line" penalties all of the time.  Sometimes, more than one on a play.

Doctors, nurses, and pharmacists need to figure fractions to determine the proper dosages of medicines for unusually large or small patients.

I work in HR and we need it to figure out if we're meeting our goals for minority hiring.

Figuring out the odds on sporting events, horse races, or poker hands.

In Olympic judo competitions, the scoring system uses fractions.

Answer 9

Well from a parents perspective, so that he can teach his children when they need help.  But mainly,

There are many ideas you learn in math that may not seem immediately important, but are very important for understanding new concepts in later math classes. Learning how to compute with fractions is one of these ideas. The techniques you learn for fractions are exactly the same ones you will need for parts of algebra. If you don't understand and master the ideas for fractions, then you will find learning algebra difficult. So why learn algebra...

Algebra is a very unique discipline. It is very abstract. The abstract-ness of algebra causes the brain to think in totally new patterns. That thinking process causes the brain to work, much like a muscle. The more that muscle works out, the better it performs on OTHER tasks. In simple terms, algebra builds a better brain (as do other disciplines such as learning an instrument, doing puzzles, and, yes, even some video games). When the brain is stimulated to think, the hair-like dendrites of the brain grow more extensive and more complex enabling more connections with other brain cells. We often hear that we use only a small percentage of our brain's capacity. The study of algebra is a way to increase our use of this marvelous muscle. By studying algebra, more "highways" are "built" upon which future "cargo" is transported -- cargo other than algebra.

My favorite analogy is comparing learning algebra to the construction of the railway system in the United States in the 1800's. When railroads were built, surely those men never conceived of the items that would be transported on those rails more than a hundred years later. They could not have imagined home appliances and computer equipment traveling over that railway system. But they knew that building the transportation system was important. So is it with the study of algebra -- you learn algebra by transporting numbers and variables -- later, those variables will change and you will transport something useful for your purposes.

It gives you the ability to organize a rational procedure for handling chaos. You lay out the variables, design a procedure, and follow the procedure. It is an intense form of organization.

Learning algebra isn't about acquiring a specific tool; it's about building up a mental muscle that will come in handy elsewhere. You don't go to the gym because you're interested in learning how to operate a StairMaster; you go to the gym because operating a StairMaster does something laudable to your body, the benefits of which you enjoy during the many hours of the week when you're not on a StairMaster.

On a personal perspective, I did not learn fractions in school.  I figured out when I was 23 that I wanted to be a paramedic.  It was a real struggle at first because I had to learn fractions first.  I had to know them and know them perfectly so that I could learn how to mix the meds in the IV fluids.  In high school I saw no need for learning...now I wish I had studied harder.

Answer 10

LOL, sounds like he's winning.

Tell him you will reduce his allowance (or tv time, or game time or friend time or computer time or mall time) by one third each day until he makes up his mind to learn what he is supposed to learn and stops complaining about it and trying to convince you otherwise.

Answer 11

Try not to explain for him why fractions is important and start to give him jobs by which you can force him to use the fractions.

I think by the time he will understand that fractions are used everywhere and everyday.

Answer 12

So you will know how many Milky Way bars you can buy with $2, including sales tax!

Go do the math!

Answer 13

No lol , yea its easy u can do it

Answer 14

Need to use fractions to split the check with his buddies!

Answer 15

Target what he will love one day. Cars everyone loves cars specially boys. Fractions are what would make that small difference between success and failure. Sure you can round of to the quarter of a tank when you look at the gage but if you are planing to build a better vehicle you need to know the exact amount not rounding off in quarters. Make a faster vehicle the same thing you need to know exact figures which 99% of the time are fractions of amounts. I hope that helps some what, about steel work as well is more based on gage sizes. Wood work is based on fractions and was a very good example because now days is not uncomon to work with 1/32 or 1/64 thats how good wood working measurements have become.

Answer 16

Have him bake muffins or cake.  Make a batch and a half, or a half a batch ect.  Remember that there are three teaspoons to a tablespoon.  Don't worry about stressing math, just making the recipes work.  Pancakes and muffins and most baked goods are full of fractions.