Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there was a math class and all the students were a mix of rational and irrational numbers. The bell had just rung signaling it was time to get ready for lunch and all the number students were starving. They had had a long day of practicing their math. The numbers’ teacher asked the number students to get up from their desks and get into their line ordering from least to greatest.
A loud murmur fell among the number students. The number students became so upset! They didn’t know how to line up from least to greatest because they were all different! Some of the number students were square roots. Some of the number students were fractions. Some of the number students were represented by symbols. Some of the number students were whole numbers and some of the number students were negative. The number 8 and the number pi along with the square root of 2 started to argue. The number 8 replied, “Don’t you think you guys should stop fighting? You’re both being irrational!” Pi and the square root of 2 laughed and turned away. “Why should we have to do this,” they asked? “It seems like such a waste of time!”
The number 4 along with the letter F and E started talking in the background. 4 stated, “Never try to argue with an irrational number! You won’t get anywhere. Everyone knows irrational numbers are the most aggressive!” Everyone else shook their heads in dismay. What on earth would the number students do to figure out this horrible problem? After all, they were already starving and going to be late for lunch!
“It’s easy,” the teacher said. Watch this video to find out how! The students proceeded to watch the video the teacher had selected.
After the number students watched the video, they realized that they needed to separate themselves into groups. “Wow,” now we know what to do, 4 shouted! “That was such a good video,” pi yelled! The number students that were fractions, needed to divide their numerator or top number by their denominator or the bottom number. Once they did that, they were able to know what their decimal value would be. The teacher encouraged everyone to use a calculator so they could check their answers. For the radical students, they needed to approximate the two whole numbers they fell between. Once they did that, they were able to approximate the next two decimal places to find their own decimal value. For students who were percentages, they needed to move their decimal place two spaces to the left and get rid of their percent sign. “Easy,” they replied!
The numbers quickly found their decimal value. According to their teacher’s instructions, they needed to line up in a line that was from least to greatest. The number students wrote down each student’s decimal number on the whiteboard. Collectively, as a class, the numbers students looked for the smallest decimal number. Once they found it, they listed that number first in a separate line. They then went looking for the next smallest, and the next smallest, and the next smallest number until they had everyone in a row. Once they had created their smallest to greatest number line on the whiteboard, every number student was able to go and line up against their decimal form on the whiteboard. The teacher was alerted and checked the student’s work. The teacher was extremely satisfied with their work and problem solving skills. After complementing the number students, the teacher walked the students down to their lunchroom. The number students were so excited to tell their other friends about the problem they had solved in class today. The other students in the other classes were very impressed with their creative thinking and willingness to work together to solve the problem.
After all, everyone can be ordered even if they are different. Remember, all you have to do to order rational and irrational numbers is to change them to a decimal and put the smallest decimal number first until you run out of numbers in your data set! The number students lived happily ever after. The End.
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Created with an image by Africa Studio - "Books and apple on wooden table against school blackboard"