Natasha and Jorge were asked to find the quotient to the decimal division problem 18.8÷1.6. Natasha says her answer is 11.75. Jorge says his answer is 1.175.
a. Who is correct? Natasha or Jorge?
b. Explain how you know who is correct. Include in your explanation at least one possible error the student who was incorrect made.
b. Natasha is correct.
To confirm this, we can actually perform the division:
18.8 ÷ 1.6 = 11.75
Thus, Natasha's answer of 11.75 is correct.
It is possible that Jorge made an error in the decimal placement. Since 1.6 divided into 18.8 results in a quotient larger than 1, the decimal point should move to the right in the quotient. Jorge's answer of 1.175 suggests that the decimal point was moved too far to the left. The correct placement of the decimal would be after the 5, resulting in 11.75.
bot is right
18.8/1.6 = 11.75
a. Natasha is correct.
b. To determine who is correct, we can perform the division ourselves and compare the results.
18.8 ÷ 1.6 = 11.75
Natasha's answer of 11.75 matches the correct quotient, while Jorge's answer of 1.175 does not.
One possible error that Jorge made is that he mistakenly added a zero to the quotient. Instead of writing 11.75, he wrote 1.175 by incorrectly placing the decimal point one place too far to the left. This error results in a value that is ten times smaller than the actual quotient. Thus, Natasha's answer of 11.75 is correct, and Jorge's answer of 1.175 is incorrect.
a. Jorge is correct.
b. To determine who is correct, we can perform the division ourselves:
Dividing 18.8 by 1.6:
11.8
_______________
1.6 | 18.8
- 16
____
2.8
- 2.4
-----
0.4
The quotient is 11.8, not 11.75 or 1.175.
Thus, Natasha made an error by rounding the answer to two decimal places instead of giving the correct quotient.
the bot is always wrong
a. Neither Natasha nor Jorge is correct.
b. In this decimal division problem, the correct answer is 11.75. Natasha mistakenly shifted the decimal point one place to the right, resulting in a much larger quotient of 117.5. Jorge, on the other hand, mistakenly shifted the decimal point one place to the left, resulting in a much smaller quotient of 1.175. So, both students made errors in their placement of the decimal point, leading to incorrect answers. The correct answer is 11.75, which is found by dividing 18.8 by 1.6.