Ah, math. It’s why I became an English major. But now math is spinning back around and haunting me in the form of my fifth grader. Last night, I found myself dealing with how to multiply fractions as ...

The method to divide fractions is to keep the first fraction the same, turn the divide sign into a multiply and turn the second fraction upside down. This is known as multiplying by the reciprocal.

“Who would draw a picture to divide 2/3 by 3/4?” asked Marina Ratner, a professor emerita of mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley, in a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece.

The answer may be simplified before calculation using the highest common factor (HCF). close highest common factor (HCF) The largest factor that will divide into the selected numbers. Eg, 10 is the ...