In your question, you've presented a situation involving the distribution of books in a school library. Let’s break it down step by step.
You have:
- \(0.3\) representing the portion of books that are "how-to" books,
- \(0.2\) representing the portion of the "how-to" books that deal with carpentry,
- \(0.4\) representing the portion of the "how-to" books that deal with electronics.
Then you calculate: \[ 0.3 \times 0.4 = 0.12 \]
Here, the \(0.12\) represents a specific portion of the total books in the library. In the context of your question, we can interpret \(0.12\) as:
- (a) The portion of the books in the library that are how-to books on electronics.
Given the breakdown:
- Since \(0.3\) of the total books are how-to books and \(0.4\) of those how-to books are about electronics, multiplying \(0.3\) by \(0.4\) gives you the overall proportion of the total library that consists of how-to books specifically focused on electronics.
Therefore, the correct interpretation of \(0.12\) in the equation is: (a) the portion of the books in the library that are how-to books on electronics.