One common type of division problem is a long division problem. Take this problem, for instance:
There were 153 crackers. There were 9 crackers for each child. How many children were there?
Using a division number family will make solving this long division problem easier. Let's start by pointing to the sentence that tells about "each": There were 9 crackers for each child. What word comes after "each"? The word is "child," so child is our missing lesser (smaller) number. So 153 is our greater (larger) number, and 9 is our first lesser number.
How do we find the missing number? To solve this problem, we have to work through a long division problem. We divide 153 by 9 (153 ÷ 9) following the steps we have learned already.
We learn that there were 17 children.
Let's try another problem. There were 245 pairs of socks. Each pair came in 7 different colors. How many pairs of different-colored socks were there?
Which sentence uses "each"? "Each pair came in 7 different colors." The word that comes after "each" is "pair," so pair is our lesser number. Our given lesser number is 7, and our greater number is 245.
Let's find how many pairs of colored socks there are. We can do this through a long division problem in which we divide 245 by 7 (245 ÷ 7).
There we have it! We have 35 pairs of different-colored socks.
