How do you explain decimals? Please HELP!?

Question

I have to give a short, easy presentation on decimals.
I have to explain what a decimal is, jobs that use decimals ,how to use it in everyday life ect.
Any ideas?

Answer 1

I like to think of decimals as percents.

For example: 12.57 feet is 12 feet and 57% of one foot.

Answer 2

Decimals are fractions ( or parts) of a whole
say you have one tenth of a cookie
in a decimal, you would have .1 or a cookie
if you had 50/100 or a pizza you would have 1/2 of it or, .5

Answer 3

Start off with money - everyone knows a dollar has 100 cents in it, right? And it's written like this: $1.00 - everything after that period is a decimal. It's a perCENTage of $1, which is why it's called cents (Latin for 100ths).

Then go into what it the places mean. $1.00 = $1, $0.10 = 10 cents or 1/10th of a dollar, $0.01 = 1 cent or 1/100 of a dollar... right there you have an easy illustration of what decimals mean as well as percentages.

Answer 4

I would suggest you start with the fact that decimal means "by ten." In fact, decimal system is a numbering system where the number starts from ZERO (not one) and ends at NINE (not ten). When you go over NINE, it goes to the next digit (becomes one) and starts over from ZERO.

You can contrast this with binary, octal, and hex. Those are number systems where it increments (goes to next digit) at 2, 8, and 16 respectively.

We are all conditioned to use decimal system in everyday life. Money, length, weight, capacity, mass, they all go by decimal system.

You can also mention, for less than one, the number shifts to the right, and use decimal point to denote the value is less than one.

You could research the relationship between decimal system and the fact we all have ten fingers and ten toes.

Have fun.

Answer 5

Well, decimals are like whole numbers because both are in our number system. a decimal can be either a decimal fraction or a mixed decimal or even a whole number.

Answer 6

here are some ways we use decimals:

the Dewey Decimal System
the cents in a written amount of money
math


we use decimals everyday, even when we don't realize it!!!

isn't math great?!!

Answer 7

decimals=fractions, now run with it......