If you would like to know how much dried fruit did James buy, you can calculate this using the following steps:
5/12 of a pound of dried cherries + 1/3 of a pound of dried cranberries = 5/12 + 1/3 = 5/12 + 4/12 = 9/12 = 3/4 of a pound of dried fruit
The correct result would be 3/4 of a pound of dried fruit.