Lois C. answered • 04/21/20
BA in secondary math ed with 20+ years of classroom experience
As with any rational expression in trying to simplify it, this means reducing it by cancelling out common factors. So your first step is to factor both the numerator and denominator, if they can be factored. The numerator of g - 12 has no common factors in it, other than 1, so we will leave as is. The denominator has a GCF of 2, so when we factor it out, it becomes 2(g-12). Since the entire numerator matches with the factor of (g-12) in the denominator, and since the numerator could technically be re-written as 1(g-12), we are now able to cancel the common factor of g -12 from both numerator and denominator, leaving us with 1 in the numerator and 2 in the denominator, so the entire rational expression simplifies to 1/2. Hope this helps!
