Question

James ran 3 miles. How many yards did James run? How many feet did
James run

Answer 1

If something is the same top and bottom I call it one.
If you multiply by it, you do not change the value, only the name
for example
1 mile / 5280 feet
or
5280 feet / 1 mile
so for example if do a multiply like
2 hours * ( 60 minutes / 1 hour ) the hours cancel and you have 120 minutes
and
120 minutes * 60 seconds/ 1 minute = 7200 seconds
note we could have done that in one step if we knew
60 seconds / 1 minute * 60 minutes / 1 hour = 3600 seconds/hour
and we could have said
2 hours * (3600 seconds / hour) = 7200 seconds
SO NOW
( 5280 feet/ 1 mile ) * (1 yard / 3 feet) = 1760 yards / 1 mile

3 miles * (1760 yards/ 1 mile) = 5280 yards
3 miles * (5280 feet / 1 mile) = 15,840 feet
now if you want inches multiply those feet by (12 inches/ 1 foot) :)

Answer 2

I heard somewhere that
1 mile = 1760 yards
so 3 miles = 3(1760) or 5280 yards

somebody told me that
1 mile =5280 ft
so 3 miles = 3(8280) or 15840 ft

Answer 3

Actually in my somewhat wetter world a mile is about 6076 feet, but I did not want to get into that :)
When I do units with students I like them to get into doing a string of conversions together canceling unit names top and bottom because that is quite helpful in Engineering and Physics when you get into long strings of conversions.