MA, Stanford University
Teaching in the San Francisco Bay Area
Alissa is currently a teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area and Brightstorm users love her clear, concise explanations of tough concepts
To simplify any math expression, we follow the order of operations: Parentheses or groupings, then any Exponents, the Multiplication or Division from left to right, and lastly, Addition and Subtraction from left to right. The acronym PEMDAS might help you remember this order. Here we see that the expression needs to result in zero, so if there are two parts of it, they should be additive inverses. Using this idea, we will look to insert parentheses and create two "equal and opposite" numbers that will sum to zero.
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