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Exercises Expressions, exponents and radicals

Example 7.23 from Prealgebra, 7.3 Distributive Property

Distributive Property: example 7.23

Simplify: $m (n - 4) .$

Work it out on paper first. Then open the solution one step at a time, and stop as soon as you can finish on your own.

Solution

Distribute.

Multiply.

Notice that we wrote $m \cdot 4 as 4 m .$ We can do this because of the Commutative Property of Multiplication. When a term is the product of a number and a variable, we write the number first.

Your turn

The book's Try It right after this example: same idea, new numbers. Only the answer is given.

Simplify: $r (s - 2) .$

How did it go?

PreviousDistributive Property: example 7.22 Next Distributive Property: example 7.24

From Prealgebra (1st edition) by OpenStax (Rice University), section 7.3, licensed under CC BY 4.0. Original at openstax.org. We split the solution into steps; the words, numbers and figures are the book's. OpenStax doesn't endorse this site.