It has been 35 years since grade school and math was not a good
subject for me.  Apparently, I have handed it down to my 11 yr. old
daughter. Picture a piece of graph paper - 100 squares to be exact!!!!
 The problem is:  0.4 / 0.08 - we (my daughter) know the answer is 5,
but cannot seem to arrive at that answer by shading the squares. 
PLEASE advise us how the shading occurs to arrive at the answer 5.

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Request for Question Clarification by livioflores-ga on 11 Oct 2005 19:11 PDT

Hi!!

Not sure if I understand your question, but here is what I think you must do:
You have an entire piece composed by 100 squares, each squares
represent a hundreth of the piece. You want to divide 0.40/0.08, that
is 40 hundreths/8 hundreths. This is another way to ask in how many
parts you can divide the 40 hundreths in different pieces of 8
hundreths each one. To do that take a part of 40 squares for the graph
and with different colours shade 8 squares each time. When you finish
to shade the 40 squares you will see that you used 5 different
colours, that is how the answer 5 is found.

Let me know if this is the answer you are looking for. In the
affirmative I will post this in the answer box to claim the prize, if
not you could tell us more about the problem in order to find an
appropiate answer.

Regards,
livioflores-ga

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Clarification of Question by dumbmom-ga on 12 Oct 2005 08:48 PDT

It was exactly the answer I was looking for - you made it sound so simple!!!!

Hello dumbmom!!


I am so glad to know that you have found my answer useful. Now, in
order to make it official I will post it here.

You have an entire piece composed by 100 squares, each squares
represent a hundreth of the piece. You want to divide 0.40/0.08, that
is 40 hundreths/8 hundreths. This is another way to ask in how many
parts you can divide the 40 hundreths in different pieces of 8
hundreths each one. To do that take a part of 40 squares for the graph
and with different colours shade 8 squares each time. When you finish
to shade the 40 squares you will see that you have used 5 different
colours, that is how the answer 5 is found.


Best regards,
livioflores-ga

THAT's 6th grade math?! Dear Lord. Sounds complicated.

Complicated is not the word - more like unbelievable.  I really do
feel stupid!! 6th grade math today seems equivalent to what I was
learning 35 years ago in 10th or 11th grade.