cancel a fraction

Cancelling is a way of expressing a fraction in its simplest form.

The numerator and the denominator are divided by a common factor.

Let’s cancel the fraction below:

We can do this in two steps:

     1) divide the numerator and denominator by 2
     2) then, divide them by 2 once again.

Or, we can do this in one step by dividing the numerator and the denominator by 4 like this:

Both ways give the fraction in its simplest form, which is .

We sometimes refer to ‘cancelling a fraction’ as ‘simplifying a fraction’ or ‘reducing a fraction’.