Halving Repeatedly

Dividing by a power of 2 is just repeated halving. Take 480 ÷ 8: halve once to 240, again to 120, a third time to 60. Three halves because 8 = 2 × 2 × 2.

Dividing by 4 means halving twice; by 16, halving four times. Whenever the divisor is a power of 2, skip the long-division algorithm and keep halving. It is fast and hard to get wrong.