Question

1. A teacher had 8 packages of paper she wanted to split equally into 3 piles. How much should be in each pile? Between what two whole numbers does your answer lie?

Answer 1

If division of the packages in fractional numbers was possible, it should be 2.667 packages per pile.

The answer lies between 2 and 3 packages per pile.

Explanation:

This can be solved as a simple division.

To split 8 packages in 3, this should correspond to 8/3≈2.667.

If division of the packages in fractional numbers was possible, it should be 2.667 packages per pile.

Other way to think about it is like mentally allocating a package in each pile. We can go up to 2 packages per pile (a total of 6 packages), and we can only add a package to 2 piles, letting the last pile to have only two packages.

Then, we have 2 piles with 3 packages and one pile with 2 packages.