🍪 Sharing & Division
Fair sharing, remainders, and proportional splits
🍪 Fair sharing
Many Kangaroo problems ask: "How do you split things fairly?" The key is to find the total, then divide equally.
Total ÷ Number of people = Each person's share
🐑 Sharing with special rules
Example: 6 sheep share 210g of food. The smallest sheep gets twice as much as each of the others.
- 5 normal sheep each get x grams
- 1 smallest sheep gets 2x grams
- Total: 5x + 2x = 7x = 210
- So x = 30, and the smallest sheep gets 2 × 30 = 60g
The trick: turn the word problem into an equation. "Twice as much" means one portion counts for 2, making the total 7 portions instead of 6.
🍪 Making it equal
Example: Anna has 1 cookie, Bonnie has 4, Caspar has 7. They share 15 more cookies so everyone has the same total.
- Total cookies: 1 + 4 + 7 + 15 = 27
- Equal share: 27 ÷ 3 = 9 each
- Anna needs 9 − 1 = 8 more cookies. But wait — the question asks how many MORE, so it's just that: 8.
🍬 Remainders
A grandmother divides candies: 20 per bag, 12 left over. She put the maximum per bag (so the bags can't hold 21 or more). Minimum total candies?
She needs at least enough grandchildren that 21 candies per person would leave fewer than 12 remaining. With 13 grandchildren: 13 × 21 = 273 > 13 × 20 + 12 = 272. So minimum = 13 × 20 + 12 = 272.
🧠 Practice Quiz
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