Just came across a James Tanton blog that has some nice extensions of the old joke about bad cancellations in fractions. I used to show my students that you could simplify 16/64 by just crossing out the sixes to get 1/4. Among the similar type examples that he gives in the blog is the rather clever:
Cancel all the common numerals top and bottom and get...
See it all here, and enjoy
In your first example, the digits in the denominator would need to be reversed, would they not?
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