Chapter 4: Fractions

A photo of several bakers at work on a table in a classroom setting. — **Figure 4.1** Bakers combine ingredients to make delicious breads and pastries.Bakers combine ingredients to make delicious breads and pastries. (credit: Agustín Ruiz, Flickr)

Often in life, whole amounts are not exactly what we need. A baker must use a little more than a cup of milk or part of a teaspoon of sugar. Similarly a carpenter might need less than a foot of wood and a painter might use part of a gallon of paint. In this chapter, we will learn about numbers that describe parts of a whole. These numbers, called fractions, are very useful both in algebra and in everyday life. You will discover that you are already familiar with many examples of fractions!

Adapted from Prealgebra 2e by OpenStax (openstax.org), licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Changes were made. License: CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0.