Wednesday, March 08, 2006

 

How To Add Fractions


If the fractions you are trying to add have the same denominator, you can simply add the numerators, keeping the denominator the same.

For example, to solve 1/7 + 3/7

Add the numerators: 1 + 3 = 4

The denominator stays the same.

The answer is 4/7.

If the fractions you are trying to add have different denominators you need to convert the fractions so that all the denominators are the same.

How do you do this?

First, find a number that is a multiple of all the denominators in the question. An easy way to do this is to multiply the denominators.

For example, to find a common denominator for the following problem 1/2 + 2/7, you would multiply 2 and 7. The common denominator is 14.

Once you have found a common denominator for all the fractions in your question, you need to convert all fractions to have this denominator.

The problem can then be solved as mentioned above for fractions with the same denominator.

To continue with our example:

1/2 + 2/7 = 7/14 + 4/14
= 11/14

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