Fractious fractions

Do you remember learning about the joys of fractions in your school maths lessons? Well here is a little puzzle that shows that those rules about simplifing fractions by dividing top and bottom by a common factor can sometimes be stretched a bit further than intended!

The puzzle

Mathematics teacher Mr Snipe is trying to teach his first year students all about fractions. After he has explained the rules that allow fractions to simplified he asks one of his pupils to come up to the front of the class and write an example on the blackboard. Young Fox steps up and writes the following sum on the board.

16/64=1/4

Although the sum shouldn't work, it does! He then proceeds to write down three more similar "wrong" proper fractions that work in the same way, where the numerator and denominator are both less than 100. Can you work out what they are?

The solutions

26/65, 19/95, 49/98.


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