tobis,marcus,and dominic rode their bicycles to the arcade. tobis rode 12/5 miles, marcus rode 2 1/3 miles and dominic rode 9/4 miles. Which person rode closest to 2 miles?

Answer 1

one way is to convert all to decimals and compare.

the other way is to recall that for a given numerator, the larger the denominator, the smaller the value.

That is 1/10 is less than 1/7, and so on

Now, you have several numbers which are all greater than 2 by some amount Those amounts are

2/5, 1/3, and 1/4

We already know that 1/4 is less than 1/3.

2/5 = 6/15
1/3 = 5/15
so 1/3 is less than 2/5

so we see that 2 1/4 is the smallest of the three values. It exceeds 2 by the smallest amount.