for this problem we know that a stick is 3 2/5 in of length. And a carpenter cut off 5/8 of the stick and we want to find the lenght of the part that would be cut off. First we convert 3 2/5 into this fraction:
[tex]3\frac{2}{5}in=\frac{(3\cdot5)+2}{5}=\frac{17}{5}in[/tex]And now in order to find the desired length we can do the following operation:
[tex]\frac{5}{8}\cdot\frac{17}{5}in=\frac{17}{8}in=2.125in[/tex]So then the answer for this case would be 17/8 of inch