Expert: Josh - 11/18/2007

Question
hi there,
i would be grateful if you could help me understand this question better.
The question is,
What is the reciprocal of 7/4?
many thanks.

Answer
Hi Ron,

The reciprocal of a fraction is also called the inverse. When we take the reciprocal of (7/4), we are considering 1/(7/4). This is effectively the same as exchanging the terms in the numerator and the denominator. i.e., swapping the numbers above and below the fraction bar.

For 7/4, its reciprocal is 4/7.

We can verify that (7/4)*(4/7)=1.

Dividing both sides of the above equation by (7/4), we can see that the reciprocal of 7/4 is given by 1/(7/4)=4/7.

When a number is multiplied by its reciprocal, we always get 1. For 2/3, its reciprocal is 3/2. We can readily check that (2/3)*(3/2)=1.