Because adding and subtracting fractions requires steps to find common denominators, students of fraction arithmetic may be concerned about how these steps figure into multiplying fractions.
I’ve got great news for you though!
You Don’t Need Common Denominators to Multiply Fractions
You’ll recall from our basic overview of multiplying fractions that the denominator in the fraction is calculated by multiplying the two denominators from the numbers in the problem (the multiplicands). It doesn’t matter if these numbers are different in the problem because the steps to find the denominator are the same.
