Partitive division - Definition with Examples

What is Partitive Division?

A partitive division problem is one where you know the total number of groups, and are trying to find the number of items in each group.

For example,

There are 24 flowers equally distributed in 8 vases. How many flowers are there in each vase?

Here, we have eight groups and we have 24 flowers.

Let us start by placing 1 flower in each group.

On placing 1 flower in each group, we placed 8 flowers in 8 groups.

Again, place 1 flower in each group.

Now we have placed another 8 flowers in the 8 groups.

Again, place 1 flower in each group.

After placing the last 8 flowers in the 8 groups, we are left 8 – 8 = 0 flowers.

We can find the number of items in each group when we know the total number of items and the number of groups by either of the two ways:

1. Repeated subtraction:

We start by subtracting the number of groups from the total number of items. We then subtract the number of groups from the difference obtained. We keep subtracting the number of groups until the remainder is zero or a number smaller than the number of groups.

For example,

                 24 – 8 = 16

                 16 – 8 = 8

                   8 – 8 = 0

The number of times we subtract the number of groups gives the number of items in each group. Here, we subtracted 8 three times. So, the number of items in each group is 3.

2. Division:

To find the number of items in each group, we can directly divide the total number of items (dividend), by the total number of groups (divisor). The quotient obtained is the number of items in each group.