From the course: Preparing for the GMAT

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Adding and subtracting fractions

Adding and subtracting fractions

From the course: Preparing for the GMAT

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Adding and subtracting fractions

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- [Instructor] Okay, in this video, we will go over the easiest ways to add and subtract fractions. So let's say we had a couple of fractions here and we were asked what they add to. Well, it's not so easy to add these right now because they don't have a common denominator so one of the denominators is two and one is four so we need to get a common denominator and the way to do that is to... I'm going to write our fractions a little bigger so we can see what we have to do. We might just realize that if we multiplied this fraction on the left by two in terms of the top and bottom, that would give us a denominator of four and that would match the 3/4 so I'll rewrite that over here one times two is two and two times two is four so we end up with 2/4 plus 3/4. Now we can add these guys. We just have to go from left to right. Two plus three is five and then when we add and subtract fractions, the denominator does not change so we would not want to add the fours here. We would just want to…

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