Question

Show how you can use communitive property to simplify the evaluation of the expression -7/16 -1/4 -5/16.

Answer 1

Since you can directly sum two fractions with the same denominator, we can rearrange the sum as follows:

`-(7)/(16) - (5)/(16) - (1)/(4)`

Now we can sum the first two fraction easily:

`(-7-5)/(16) - (1)/(4) = (-12)/(16) - (1)/(4)`

We can simplify the first fraction: 12/16=3/4. So, we can sum the two fractions again because they have the same denominator:

`(-12)/(16) - (1)/(4) = (-3)/(4) - (1)/(4) = (-3-1)/(4) = (-4)/(4) = -1`