Expert: Lynn Houston - 10/1/2008

Question
Hi Lynn Houston
I left school years ago and just wanted to refresh my knowledge on basic maths principles. One thing has me real stumped and thats long division. Ive was never the brightest kid and it always took me a few rounds to understand and make things stick. Ive done some web searches on LD but they only cover one calculation example and I think it might help if I could be shown a couple of examples using different values ie  figures and then maybe some examples of larger values. Hope you can help and hopefully help me get my head around it!

Many thanks

Colin (UK)

Answer
34623 divided by 1292 (the process is the same whether it's big or small numbers).

         ___27______   
1292 |34623 (1292 goes into 3462 2 times)
         2584  (subtract 2 times 1292)
       --------
         9783   (carry down the 3)
         9044   (1292 goes into 9783 7 times, subtract 8 times 1292)
       -------   
          739 (if you want to continue further,  you add a decimal and zeros to the 34623 and continue dividing, multiplying and subtracting.

Hope this helps.