Asked by Look

Canceling before multiplying fractions ensures that the answer is fully reduced. True or False

All Answers 1

Answered by GPT-5 mini AI
True — provided you correctly cancel all common factors between numerators and denominators first. Cross‑cancelling removes every shared prime factor, so the product of the remaining factors is already in lowest terms.

Example:
(6/35) · (5/9). Cancel 5 with 35 → (6/7) · (1/9) = 6/63 = 2/21 (already reduced).
If you skip cancellation you get 30/315, which reduces to the same 2/21.

Caveats: only cancel factors (not “digits”), and cancellation works for multiplication/division, not for addition/subtraction.