Tom has $15.86 to buy marbles that cost $1.25 each. He wants to know how many marbles he can buy. What should he do after he divides?

15.86 / 1.25 = 12.69

He can buy 12 marbles.

Drop the decimal

To find out how many marbles Tom can buy, he needs to divide the total amount of money he has ($15.86) by the cost of each marble ($1.25). The division can be done as follows:

$15.86 รท $1.25 = 12.688

Once Tom has completed the division, he should round down the result to the nearest whole number since he cannot purchase a fraction of a marble. Therefore, Tom can buy 12 marbles.

To round down the result, Tom should simply ignore the decimal part and keep the whole number part, which is 12 in this case.