Help please?

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Hi everyone! I bought a book online that had 5 practice TEAS exams. I have been doing pretty good but I noticed one of my tough spots that I consistently have is with decimals. I know that if you multiply say .46 and .32 it should have 4 decimal spots and the answer would be .1472, however that is not always the case and that is what I am having problems with. For example if you do .25 and .32 it comes out .08... which is only 2 decimal spots, so my question is, when is it the number of decimal spaces in the problem and when is it not? Any help is appreciated, thank you so much!

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1) .46 x .32

.46

x .32

---------

92

+1380

------

.1472

2) .25

x .32

--------

50

+ 750

--------

.0800

^Here you have to add one more zero before the 8, because you need to move the final answer 4 spots to the left. It states that the answer is just ".08" because any 0's after the 8 will not change the value of the final number.

Hope this helps somewhat lol.

P.S. What's the name of the book that you're using? Is it the Mcgraw-Hill one?

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1) .46 x .32

.46

x .32

---------

92

+1380

------

.1472

2) .25

x .32

--------

50

+ 750

--------

.0800

^Here you have to add one more zero before the 8, because you need to move the final answer 4 spots to the left. It states that the answer is just ".08" because any 0's after the 8 will not change the value of the final number.

Hope this helps somewhat lol.

P.S. What's the name of the book that you're using? Is it the Mcgraw-Hill one?

Yes, it's the McGraw-Hill 5 TEAS Practice Tests. and okay that makes sense but there was an example in the book maybe you can help me understand why, it's probably the same reason. They have .15x.52 so I figured okay 4 decimal points and answered with A) .0078 and they have the correct answer as .078 which is choice B.

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They have .15x.52 so I figured okay 4 decimal points and answered with A) .0078 and they have the correct answer as .078 which is choice B.

.15

x .52

--------

30

+ 750

--------

780

^Again, it's the same concept: since you need to move 4 decimal points to the left and there are only 3 numbers, you have to add a 0 before the 7.

So: .0780 (The 0 after the 8 does not affect the final answer, so that's why the answer is stated as ".078".) ;)

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Specializes in Intermediate care.

If at all possible look into a book titled Math for Nurses (A pocket skill-builder and reference guide for dosage calculations) by Kaplan. I had a really hard time with fractions and percentages until I read the first half of the book. It truly is a life saver if you are a bit rusty on your math. I got it from Barnes and Nobles for less than $15 but if you have a e-reader it would probably be cheaper. Good Luck!

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0.15

x 0.52

_________

030

075.

+ 000.

______

0.0780

It might help you if you put the zeros and multiply everything then since you have 4 decimal places in total on the original problem you just count from right to left 4 places and place the decimal point after the 4th place.

Hope that helps. (0.780 is the same as 0.78)

ps: thought that more than one explanation might shed a light but xinspiredx did a great job too

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