Answer:
1/2 of the work
Explanation:
When the problem tells us we want to find the amount of work done "between that man and woman," they're suggesting we'll be adding their two parts together. But how do we add 1/6 and 1/3 together?
When we add things together, it's important we have them under the same name, or denomination, and we need to be smart about how we give those names. Two apples and three bananas don't make 5 banapples, but they do make 5 fruits.
When we're trying to give fractions the same name, we want to split them up so each individual piece is the same size. Fractions are usually named by how many equal parts they split one whole into, so this is the same as making sure each whole is split up into the same number of equal parts.
1/6 is what we get when we take a whole and split it into 6 pieces. 1/3 is what we get when we split that whole into 3 pieces. To make sure we're working with the same size pieces, we can split each third in half. For each of those three original pieces, we now have two, giving us 3 x 2 = 6 equal pieces. Notice that 1/3 takes up 2 of these pieces, or 2/6. (See the first picture for what this looks like visually)
1/6 + 2/6 = 3/6, and since 3 is exactly half of 6, we say that 3/6 = 1/2. So the man and the woman each do 1/2 of the work. (On the second picture, I've colored the man's part red and the woman's part blue)