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

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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:

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

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