If you have 0.5 / 0.5, that equals 1, because it’s a number (except 0), divided by itself. That much we seem to agree on.
So then if we want to get from this to 0.25 / 0.5 as shown in the meme, we have to look at what’s changed and apply that change to each side of the equation. So what changed? The top of the fraction is 0.25 instead of 0.5. Hopefully we can agree that 0.25 is half of 0.5. We halved the top side of the fraction on the left.
Now we want to apply that change on the right side then to keep our equation balanced. For this step, it helps to rewrite 1 on the right side as 1 / 1. Then we halve the top side of that fraction just like we did with the left side, giving us 0.5 / 1, which simplifies to just 0.5.
If you have 0.5 / 0.5, that equals 1, because it’s a number (except 0), divided by itself. That much we seem to agree on.
So then if we want to get from this to 0.25 / 0.5 as shown in the meme, we have to look at what’s changed and apply that change to each side of the equation. So what changed? The top of the fraction is 0.25 instead of 0.5. Hopefully we can agree that 0.25 is half of 0.5. We halved the top side of the fraction on the left.
Now we want to apply that change on the right side then to keep our equation balanced. For this step, it helps to rewrite 1 on the right side as 1 / 1. Then we halve the top side of that fraction just like we did with the left side, giving us 0.5 / 1, which simplifies to just 0.5.