Suppose there are 2 pieces of the cake left over, but you don't know how many pieces were in the whole cake. Explain how you could find the number of pieces in the whole cake if Taylor told you 1/6 of the cake was left.

You know that 1/6 of the cake is left, so 5/6 of the cake was eaten. We can set up a proportion with the information given:

2:1/6

x:5/6

Cross multiply to solve:

(2) (5/6) = (1/6) x

10/6=1/6x

x=10

10 pieces were eaten, plus the 2 pieces that are still left.

10+2=12 total pieces of cake