Final answer:
15(2/5) = 6 can represent a real-life situation such as distributing 2/5 of 15 pies or five-dollar bills, resulting in a total of 6 whole pies or 6 five-dollar bills, respectively.
Step-by-step explanation:
The mathematics question asked for a real-life representation of the multiplication problem 15(2/5) = 6, and to explain what the result represents in the problem. In the realm of real-life applications, this multiplication can be seen in various scenarios, such as cutting a pie or determining a certain portion of money. To put this into context, if you have 15 pies and you are only interested in 2/5 of each pie, the operation 15 multiplied by 2/5 simplifies to 15 * (2/5) which equals 6, meaning you would have a total of 6 whole pies.
When discussing multiplication with fractions, it is often useful to think of money. For example, imagine you have 15 five-dollar bills and you want to give away 2/5 of your total number of bills; you end up giving away 6 five-dollar bills which is $30. Here, the numerical value 6 in the equation represents the 6 five-dollar bills or the 6 whole pies, depending on the context you apply it to. Reflecting on the multiplication and division with significant figures, when conducting such operations, it is important to consider the precision of the final result based on the precision of the input values.
Real-Life Multiplication Example
Another interpretation could be in a classroom setting where there are 15 packets of pencils, and each packet contains exactly 5 pencils. If a teacher decides to redistribute 2/5 of each packet to the students, effectively, she would be giving 2 pencils from each of the 15 packets, which equals to a total of 30 pencils distributed. When we calculate 15(2/5), we get the number 6, which in this context means 6 sets of 5 pencils were distributed.