A few weeks ago for our weekend Family Math project we talked about fractions and decimals in binary. That blog post is here:
https://mikesmathpage.wordpress.com/2014/04/05/fractions-and-decimals-in-binary/
These family math project are just for fun. These projects tend to cover either fun math we find around the house – see the paper folding example from all the way back in Family Math 1:
or, if not stuff from around the house, they are intended to be a fun overview of some advanced math. The overview of fractions and decimals in binary was supposed to be in the second category, but it led to a really great surprise this morning.
Today with my younger son we moved on to a new chapter in our book – repeating decimals. A few days ago we had started off talking about decimals and fractions by reviewing why .9999…. = 1, so I was hoping to play off of that to show why 1/3 = 0.33333…. However, when I sat down and asked my son what he thought the decimal expansion for 1/3 would be I got a little surprise:
“I don’t know, but I know what it is in binary.”
So fun that he remembered this talk from the Family Math project from a few weeks ago:
With that, we started down a totally new path – how does knowing what 1/3 is in binary help you understand the decimal expansion?
Such a fun morning!!
Mike's Math Page 