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How do you simplify 3 1/4 x 3/5 someone please help me

1 Answer

7 votes

Answer:

We want to simplify:

(3 + 1/4)*(3/5)

The first step is to write the first term as a single rational number.

We know that:

3*1 = 3

and 4/4 = 1

then:

3*1 = 3*(4/4) = (3*4)/4 = 12/4

We do this because we want to have the same denominator in both numbers, so we can directly add them.

Then we get:

(3 + 1/4)*(3/5) = (12/4 + 1/4)*(3/5) = (13/4)*(3/5)

And remember that in the multiplication of rational numbers the numerator are multiplied together and the same for the denominators, then we get:

(13/4)*(3/5) = (13*3)/(4*5)

If we solve the multiplications we get:

(13*3)/(4*5) = (39/20)

Now, we can notice that in the numerator we have two prime numbers, 13 and 3.

And in the denominators, we have a 4 (which is equal to 2*2) and a 5.

So the prime numbers in the numerator and the denominator are all different, this means that we can not simplify it furthermore.

Then we have:

(3 + 1/4)*(3/5) = (39/20)

User Matt Stephenson
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