Question

How do you simplify `8/12+1/6`?

Answer 1

`5/6`

Explanation:

We can do this in a couple of ways. The trick to this is that we need the denominators to be the same. (Remember that the denominator tells you how many pieces something is divided into - and so having 2 identical pizzas divided into 12 pieces for the one and 6 pieces into the other won't give us identically sized slices. We need to know that we are working with the same size!)

Let's do it one way - increase the 6 to a 12:

`8/12+1/6`

`8/12+1/6(1)`

`8/12+1/6(2/2)`

`8/12+2/12`

`10/12`

`(2xx5)/(2xx6)`

`(2/2)(5/6)`

`(1)(5/6)`

`5/6`

We could also do it the other way and reduce the denominator 12 fraction to a 6 first:

`8/12+1/6`

`(2xx4)/(2xx6)+1/6`

`(2/2)(4/6)+1/6`

`(1)(4/6)+1/6`

`4/6+1/6`

`5/6`