How to Convert a Decimal to a Fraction OR

How to Convert a Decimal to a Fraction

Fractions are relatively easy to convert one-to-one into decimals and vice versa. The process is basically the same as converting 0. 7 and 0. 3 into fractions.

Decimal

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It’s important to know how to do this in order to work with different number forms in the workplace. For instance, David, a student in Chad’s class, is a machinist. Machinists produce metal parts with a precision of up to one one-thousandth of a inch. If you are continuously working in decimals, you might forget how to work with fractions, so David wants to know how to change those decimals into fractions. The best way to illustrate how to do this is simply with an example.

This is up to you. This could be fourths, eighths, sixteenths, or thirty-seconds. The most common way would be to change the decimal of an inch into sixteenths. This is done by multiplying the decimal of an inch by the number in the denominator of whichever fraction you are working towards. For our example, we are looking to convert the decimal into sixteenths, so we multiply it by 16. (Source: opentextbc.ca)

Convert

To convert a fraction into a decimal, you perform long division by dividing the numerator by the denominator. This process works for converting both proper and improper fractions into decimals. If you have a mixed number, you can convert it into a decimal by performing long division on just its fraction component, and then add that answer to the whole number component of the mixed number.

Our answer from the long division tells us that 5/8 in decimal form is 0.625. This process for converting a fraction to a decimal works not just with proper fractions, but with improper fractions as well. However, if you have a mixed number, you do not need to convert it to an improper fraction before converting it to a decimal. Instead, you just convert the fraction part of a mixed number to a decimal and then add the whole number part of the mixed number to it. (Source: study.com)