Fly Catching

Jikjok calculated that the average number of flies eaten per minute by this gecko is

1.090909091

 

 

 

 

He found this by dividing a whole number of flies by a whole number of minutes on a standard calculator.
What were those two whole numbers?

Fly Gecko

A Mathematics Lesson Starter Of The Day


Topics: Starter | Arithmetic

  • Vanessa Howe, howesvc@aol.com
  •  
  • What is the answer to November ths starter of the day?
  • Sarah, Newcastle
  •  
  • Its / . I used it today before i did "changing recurring decimals into fractions Y MOD .
  • David Gee, Notting Hill Prep School
  •  
  • The numbers are divided by ( / cancelled down). The clue is in the recurring decimal - a two digit cycle ... for / ... for / ... for / . Elevenths as decimals have two digit cycles of the multiples of nine.
  • David Gee, Notting Hill
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  • Sorry, typo in cut and paste! / is . ( x ) / . ( x )
    / . ( x ).
  • Jacob, Swavesey Village Collge
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  • Jacob Savage in year from Swavesey Village college also noticed that these two numbers worked.....
    / .
  • Declan, Liverpool
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  • The solution is simply incorrect. The the average was exactly . , then he would have in . However, is prime and this fraction does not simplify. The answer is flies in minutes. The proposed solution: flies in minutes is incorrect because / . . In fact / has an infinite decimal expansion of the form . ....
  • 5/6A, SAHPS
  •  
  • We the students in / A at SAHPS found this one challenging but we came up with an original solution. Yeah ! That was fun!
  • P Rudd, Glan-y-Mor Comprehensive
  •  
  • The answer / is correct because it says using a standard calculator, which is why only the first digits of the answer is shown. Great question as many younger students believe an answer containing so many decimal places must be wrong!
    Thanks Transum.
  • Benjamin Garrett, Watford
  •  
  • WOW What a starter- it took us ages to work it out!
  • Vicky, Stoke Fleming
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  • Help- my class still haven't managed it? Help.
  • Larry, Math Teacher
  •  
  • . ...is a recurring simple fraction so it would be whole and / as you have digits for the repeating period Then you simplify by and get whole and / . When you convert the mixed into an improper fraction you get / . That means flies every minutes. Hope that helps!

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Previous Day | This starter is for 6 November | Next Day

 


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Flies

Similar Starter

Recurring Decimal

Recurring Decimal

Use your calculator to find which whole number divided by another whole number gives the answer 1.36363636
This Starter also has a related pupil activity.


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Laptops In Lessons

Teacher, do your students have access to computers?
Do they have iPads or Laptops in Lessons?

Whether your students each have a TabletPC, a Surface or a Mac, this activity lends itself to eLearning (Engaged Learning).

Laptops In Lessons

Here a concise URL for a version of this page without the comments.

Transum.org/go/?Start=November6

Here is the URL which will take them to a related student activity.

Transum.org/go/?to=Recurring

Student Activity

 


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