Question

simplify -14x+2/(7x-1)(x+5)

Answer 1

You can factor out a -2 in the numerator. When you have something like this, your first thought has to be that you can do some sort of factoring. The bottom two things are already in a factored form, so the only possible thing we could do is to the top. So I look at the top and am trying to find the biggest number that I can divide out of -14x and out of + 2. In this case, the only number I can truly factor out is a 2. So factoring out a 2 would look liek this:

2(-7x+1)

but as you can see, this doesn;t quite match the bottom. But what I can also do is factor out a negative. When I yank a negative out of both terms in the middle I get this:
-2(7x-1)
Now I have something that matches top and bottom. Because of that, I can now do this:




This means our final answer is this:

\[\frac{ -2 }{ (x+5) }\]

Make sense?