Dividing is a very important skill that you will use throughout your life. Note that is does not cover everything and is just the basics. So, good luck!

Step 1: Why It's Important

Dividing is important. You can use it to calculate how much a person has to pay for a party when the total is a certain amount. You can also use it to calculate if a deal is really a good deal(buy 5 for 3$).

Step 2: General/Basics

The dividend is the quantity to be divided. The divisor is the number that is doing the dividing. And finally, the quotient is the answer to a division problem. So in the problem below a is the dividend, b is the divisor, and c is the quotient. Also, a fraction is the same as a division problem. So when you say 12/3, it's 12 divided by 3.

Step 3: Dividing Whole Numbers

To divide a whole number, you are actually finding how many of the 2nd number are in the 1st number, thus getting the answer. For example, 10 divided by 5, you are finding out how many fives go into ten, so it is 2.

Step 4: Dividing Fractions and Whole Numbers

Dividing fractions is a little bit more complicated. First, if there is two fractions, you have to rewrite it. You keep the first fractions the same but you have to find the reciprocal(switch the bottom and top number). Then, change the division sign to a multiplication sign. Now, you multiply the top numbers of each fraction(dividends) to get the top number of the fraction. Then, you multiply the bottom numbers of each fraction(divisors) getting the bottom number of the fraction. You can simply this fraction by dividing it! Then, you get what you call a simplified number.

For a whole number and a fraction, it's almost the same. Now you ask what do i do with the whole number? Well, that whole number is actually over one. So if you have 5, it's actually 5/1. People don't write it this way because it's a waste of time. Once you've changed the whole number, you do what you did for the two fractions: reciprocal, multiply, etc.

Step 5: Checking Your Work

This is quite easy. All you have to do is multiply the answer you got by the divisor and you should get the dividend. If you don't, go over the problem and see what you did wrong.