How to Simplify Variable Expressions

Video Transcript

"If you want to simplify a variable expression. So let's say you have two times two x plus three plus four x. It's called a variable expression, first of all it's called variable because there are variables in it. It's called an expression because we don't have an equal sign. Once you have an equal sign it's called an equation. Without an equal sign it's called an expression. So if we want to simplify this, we want to basically collect like terms. The first step is we are going to distribute. It's kind of order of operation, you have to do multiplication before you do addition. And distributing is a form of multiplication. So we are going to do two times two is four x, two times three is six and then we have that over there. Notice that I don't distribute the two to this guy only to what's in the parenthesis. So now we can collect like terms, four x plus four x is eight x plus six. So the variable expression two times the quantity two x plus three plus four x, first I distribute then I add like terms. So that's the simplified expression. You can see that it is a lot simpler in fact then the original variable expression."