Question

What is the value of \[\dfrac{3}{8}-\dfrac{1}{8}\]?

Answer 1

Hint: In this type of question we need to check the denominator of the value, if there values are same then we can proceed by directly using the numerator and the mathematical operator given between them, if not we will make it same and then further solve it the same way we solved for same denominator.

Complete step by step solution:
In the above mentioned question there are two points that have to be taken care of first and the most important checking of the base i.e. we need to make sure that the denominator of the mentioned variables are the same so that we can easily make use of the mathematical operator present between the terms. These mathematical operators will be used in the numerators only if the denominators are the same. If the denominators of one or more than one terms then we are going to use the LCM method to solve the question so as to make the denominators the same and then we can proceed to solve the question with the same method we use above i.e. using the same denominator method.
So now that we have understood the basic concept of solving, in our question both the terms have the same denominator i.e. 8 so we can directly apply the same denominator method i.e. using the numerator and the mathematical operator between them.
So we get:
\[\begin{align}
  & \dfrac{3}{8}-\dfrac{1}{8}=\dfrac{3-1}{8} \\
 & =\dfrac{2}{8} \\
 & =\dfrac{1}{4} \\
\end{align}\]
We are going to convert it into an easier form by cancelling out 2 from both numerator and denominator as 8 is a multiple of 2.
So we get the final value as \[\dfrac{1}{4}\].

Note: In the above mentioned question sometimes while taking LCM for different denominators we forget to check that whether the denominators are of multiple to each other like 4 and 8 and we know that 8 is a multiple of 4 so rather than doing LCM we can easily calculate the terms.