Short division with remainder

Now we will divide ... ... and the method we will use is the short division method. Here is the first example: 876 divided by 4. Start from the left in the number to be divided, the dividend. There we find an eight.

And then we have the number we divide by, the divisor, the four. Four fits into eight two times. Write two in the answer, the quotient. Now: the next digit in the dividend, the seven. Four fits into seven one time.

But four does not fit into seven exactly one time. Four times one is four and four times two is eight. So there is no number in the four times table that becomes seven. There will be three left of the seven after we use one four. But four fits into seven at least once, so we start by writing down one in the quotient.

What are we going to do with those three that are left over? Well, to show that there will be three left, we write a small three after seven, as a remainder. We use this digit three, together with the next digit, which is a six. The remainder three, and six in the dividend form the number 36. So it is 36 we will divide by four, in the next step.

Now we ask ourselves: how many times does four fit into 36? Four fits into 36 nine times. It fits exactly. Write nine after one in the quotient. Now there are no digits left in the dividend so we have the quotient ready.

876 divided by four is 219. One last example! 832 divided by four. Pause the video and try to calculate it yourself! If you used short division, you might have thought like this: How many times does four fit into eight?

Two times. And it fits exactly, so there will be no remainder. Then four fits zero times into three, so there will be a zero in the quotient after the two, and we have three as a remainder. And since the digit three is already there, in the dividend, we do not really need to write a remainder if we want to save some time. We read the digits three and two together, as 32, and move on to the last step.

Four fits into 32 eight times. And it does so evenly - 8. The quotient is 208. That’s it! Now we have calculated with short division, where we used a memory digit to keep order of the remainder.

Remainders are good to use when a division is not even.