[Math] Guessing how many times a smaller number goes into bigger number

divisibility

For example when diving 105 / 148. After you add a number 0 to the numerator, the division becomes 1050 / 148.

The answer becomes a decimal with 1050 / 148. The two numbers are not divisible by a common number so the first step i have to do is guess how many times 148 goes into 1050.

My approach is to round 148 to 200 and since 200 * 5 = 1000 the first number in the quotient must be above 5. I then had to guess 148 * 5, then 148 * 6, then 148 * 7. I'm studying for a standardized test that does not allow calculators or else i would just use a calculator.

Is there a better or smarter strategy to guessing how many times 148 goes into 1050 other than guessing like i did?

Best Answer

For this particular problem:

I recognize $105$ as $3 \times 5 \times 7$.

Then I wonder: Are any of these factors shared by $148$?

No, unfortunately not: We can quickly see the latter is not divisible by $3$ or $5$.

However, its predecessor $147 = 7 \times 21 = 3 \times 7 \times 7$.

So: I might just estimate by replacing the denominator:

$$\frac{105}{148} \approx \frac{105}{147} = \frac{3 \times 5 \times 7}{3 \times 7 \times 7} = \frac{5}{7}$$

If you happen to know that $\frac{1}{7} = 0.\overline{142857}$, then you might recognize $\frac{5}{7}$ as just over $0.71$.

Finally: Since we decreased the denominator, the original ratio is a bit less than our adjusted one. Since our adjusted ratio is just over $0.71$, this seems like a pretty good guess.

(Indeed: $\frac{105}{148} = 0.709459\ldots$)

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