A particular $12$-hour digital clock displays the hour and minute of a day. Unfortunately, whenever it is supposed to display a $1$, it mistakenly displays a $9$. For example, when it is 1:16 PM the clock incorrectly shows 9:96 PM. What fraction of the day will the clock show the correct time?

$\mathrm{(A)}\ \frac 12\qquad \mathrm{(B)}\ \frac 58\qquad \mathrm{(C)}\ \frac 34\qquad \mathrm{(D)}\ \frac 56\qquad \mathrm{(E)}\ \frac {9}{10}$
Solution 1
The clock will display the incorrect time for the entire hours of $1, 10, 11$ and $12$.  So the correct hour is displayed $\frac 23$ of the time.  The minutes will not display correctly whenever either the tens digit or the ones digit is a $1$, so the minutes that will not display correctly are $10, 11, 12, \dots, 19$ and $01, 21, 31, 41,$ and $51$.  This amounts to fifteen of the sixty possible minutes for any given hour.  Hence the fraction of the day that the clock shows the correct time is $\frac 23 \cdot \left(1 - \frac {15}{60}\right) = \frac 23 \cdot \frac 34  = \boxed{\frac 12}$.  The answer is $\mathrm{(A)}$.

Solution 2
The required fraction is the number of correct times divided by the total times. There are 60 minutes in an hour and 12 hours on a clock, so there are 720 total times.
We count the correct times directly; let a correct time be $x:yz$, where $x$ is a number from 1 to 12 and $y$ and $z$ are digits, where $y<6$. There are 8 values of $x$ that will display the correct time: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. There are five values of $y$ that will display the correct time: 0, 2, 3, 4, and 5. There are nine values of $z$ that will display the correct time: 0, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. Therefore there are $8\cdot 5\cdot 9=40\cdot 9=360$ correct times.
Therefore the required fraction is $\frac{360}{720}=\frac{1}{2}\Rightarrow \boxed{\mathrm{(A)}}$.