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So I'm in year 11 (10th grade for americans) and I have a really stupid question..

What does it mean to divide in maths?

I recently looked it up and it said "To divide means to slit the number up into equal groups". However, other sites said "To divide means to see how many times the divisor fits into the dividend"

Could someone please tell me which one it is?

Thanks, sorry for such a stupid question

JamesM
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  • Both, though the second is a little clearer imo. Think about dividing $6$ apples among your $3$ friends... – Nap D. Lover Nov 13 '20 at 18:46
  • I assume you have been to elementary school so what are you looking for that wasn't covered by your early education? – John Douma Nov 13 '20 at 19:31
  • @JohnDouma well I apologize for asking a damn question. – JamesM Nov 13 '20 at 20:41
  • I was asking for clarification. Are you saying you were never taught division in school? What level of definition do you seek? – John Douma Nov 13 '20 at 20:52
  • Two months ago you posted a question that said you were in year 6. Perhaps you advanced too rapidly. – John Douma Nov 13 '20 at 20:58
  • @JohnDouma Sorry man, it's been a long day and I was in a kinda bad mood. To properly answer your question, my elementary school told me both versions but never specified which is correct. PS my brother posted that question, he's in year 6 and I told him he could find answers here. – JamesM Nov 13 '20 at 21:15
  • Division is the operation inverse to multiplication, this is the most correct answer. – Anixx Jun 16 '22 at 12:28

2 Answers2

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It's both! Technically speaking, for real numbers $a,b,c$, with $b\neq 0$, we say that $a/b = c$ means that $a = b\cdot c$, i.e division is the inverse operation of multiplication. Now as to how we can interpret this operation, there are several possibilities, and you've hit on two of them.

$1.)$ "To divide means to split the number up into equal groups"

Suppose you have $15$ objects which you want to split into $3$ equal groups. Then we can think of $15/3 = 5$ as telling us that in order to have three equal groups we need each group to contain five items, because $15 = 5 + 5 + 5$.

$2.)$ "To divide means to see how many times the divisor fits into the dividend"

Now let's say we want to see how many times $3$ fits into $15$. Again we compute $15/3 = 5$, which we interpret as meaning that $3$ fits into $15$ five times, i.e. $15 = 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3$.

Note, however, that because $5 + 5 + 5$ and $3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3$ are both perfectly valid ways of thinking about $15$, neither way of thinking of division is necessarily better than the other, though depending on the context we may find one interpretation easier to think about/visualize that the other.

DMcMor
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  • Hi. I like your answer. I changed the multiplication sign because I think the $\times$ sign is more familiar to those of school age. – Joe Nov 13 '20 at 18:50
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To ''divide'' is to split or place in pieces, think of it like this if you have a chocolate bar with 12 connected pieces and you break off 6 of them you can say you divided them by half because half of 12 is 6 so 12 dived by 2 (which is half) Is six.

Isaiah Stuart
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