How do you simplify #-3/-8 * -7/-12#?

Question

1781 views around the world

You can reuse this answer
Creative Commons License

Answer 1 · 2016-09-05T00:57:23

#7/32#

#-3/(-8)xx-7/(-12)#

#=3/8xx7/12#

#=1/8xx7/4#

#=7/32#

Answer 2 · 2016-09-05T01:02:16

#7/32#

Let's start with the original:

#-(3/(-8))xx-(7/(-12))#

The first thing I want to deal with is all those negative signs. There are two in the left-term and two in the right term. Remember that:

#-1xx-1=1#

And so the negatives in the two fractions multiply against each other and become 1, so those are now gone. We can now clean this up a bit:

#3/8xx7/12#

Let's combine the two terms, cancel what we can, and see where we end up:

#3/8xx7/12=(3xx7)/(8xx12)=(3xx7)/(8xx4xx3)=7/(8xx4)(3/3)=7/32(1)=7/32#