To get the idea of how to solve this, let's use simple easy numbers.
? + 2 = 5
What would the "?" be?
It is basically telling us that 2 added with ?WHAT? gives us 5?
We know it's 3!
But how did we figure it out??
We did 5 - 2 = 3...
Similarly we will solve the fractional problem shown:
? + 1/16= 3/2
this will be: "what plus 1/16 gives us 3/2??"
How will we solve it? Similar to the easy problem we just solved.
It will be 3/2 MINUS 1/16
So, that is:
[tex]\frac{3}{2}-\frac{1}{16}[/tex]The common denominator, before we add, is 16. So let's do the problem:
[tex]\begin{gathered} \frac{3}{2}-\frac{1}{16} \\ =\frac{3(8)-1}{16} \\ =\frac{24-1}{16} \\ =\frac{23}{16} \end{gathered}[/tex]