Ordering rational numbers in context | Grade 8 (TX) | Khan Academy

During basketball practice, four students practiced their free throw shots. The table below shows the proportion of free throws they each make.

Let's see. Simone made 68 of their free throws. David made Z 68 H hundreds, I guess I could say, of his free throws. Elena made 8/10 of her free throws, and Raj made 72% of his free throws.

Which student made the largest proportion of their free throws? So pause this video and try to figure this out on your own before we do this together.

All right, so what's interesting about this is that they've given the proportion of free throws made in different formats. My brain, and I think most people's brains, have an easier time doing this if we put them all in the same format.

Usually, at least for me, it's easiest to put it all into a decimal format. So let's put all of these into a decimal format. So let's start with 6/8. Well, before I even try to express it as a decimal, I can recognize that that is the same thing as 3/4. Both six and eight are divisible by two, so I'm going to divide them both by two, and I get 3/4.

You might recognize 3/4 is the same thing as 0.75. David's free throw proportion is already there as a decimal. Elena's 8/10 is 0.8, or we could say 0.80 if we want to express everything in terms of hundredths.

Then last but not least, Raj is 72%. That's 72 per 100. 72% is 72 over 100, or 0.72, or 72/100s.

So now it's easy to compare them. It looks like David has the lowest proportion of free throws made; and then the next lowest is going to be Raj.

Then the next lowest, or second highest, is Simone, and then the highest proportion of free throws made looks like it is Elena.

And we are done.