Final answer:
An algebraic expression that represents the situation is s * 4 * 11. The variable s represents the number of students. Multiplication is used to calculate the total number of pears.
Step-by-step explanation:
An algebraic expression that represents the situation of students equally sharing 4 baskets of pears, with each basket having 11 pears, can be written as:
s * 4 * 11
Where s represents the number of students.
I chose the variable s to represent the number of students because it is a commonly used variable to represent the quantity of people or objects in a problem. The operation of multiplication was used because we need to find the total number of pears, which is obtained by multiplying the number of students (s) by the number of baskets (4) and the number of pears in each basket (11).