1) Make sure that the fractions (#1/3# and #3/4#) have a common denominator. Therefore, find the least common denominator (LCD).
After finding out the LCD, you should get 12.
2) Make the fraction #1/3# have an equivalent fraction where 12 is the denominator. To do so, since we know that # 3 times 4 = 12#, we should also do #1 times 4 = 4#. Therefore, we now have the whole fraction as #26 1/4#. Do the same thing to #3/4#, but this time # 4 times 3 = 12# so # 3 times 3 = 9#. This fraction will now be # 17 9/12#.
3) Try to subtract the fractions first. Since #4/12# is less than #9/12#, we have to "borrow" a whole from 26 to make sure that #4/12# becomes a greater fraction than #9/12# so that we can easily subtract. Since we borrowed a whole, which in this case is worth 12 units (look at the fraction's denominator), we should add 12 to 4 to now get the numerator of 16. So we now have the top fraction being #25 16/12#. Now we can actually subtract!
4) Do the fractions first, #16 - 9 = 7#, to now get #7/12# and the whole numbers #25 - 17 = 8#.
5) Our answer is now # 8 7/12#.
You can check the image below to see the work being done in accordance to the steps that I provided above.
