Brett shaded 4/8 if a sheet of notebook paper. aisha says he shaded 1/2

Aisha is correct, they both are technically the same but once you reduce 4/8 it will become 1/2

This is the concept of algebra, to get the inequality we proceed as follows; Erma subtracted 8 from both sides and divided both sides by 8 so that we can get the value of the unknown. The the properties used were:

Subtraction properties of inequality, which states that:
if a<b, then a-c<b-c

Division properties of inequality, which states that:
if a<b, then a/c=<b/c