How do you know whether to put your value as the input or the output function

Compare the subtraction problems 6/8 - 5/8 = 1/8 and 6/9 - 7/9 = 1/9 why is the answer to the first problem positive and the answer to the second problem negative

Problem melissa is her dad build a walkway in their backyard. the walkway will be 54 feet long and 1.5 feet wide. the local hardware store sells tiles which are 1.5 by 1.5 feet and come in boxes of 12. how many boxes of tiles do they need?

The vertices of a triangle are a(7,5), b(4,2), c(9,2). what is m