How do you simplify (a + b)(a - 2b)?

1 Answer

When you say simplify I'm going to take it as expand since factoring an expression is sometimes a way of simplifying it.
The answer will be a^2 -2b^2-ab

Explanation:

You simply multiply out each factor.

So you start by multiplying the a in (a+b) to each term in (a-2b).
You will get a^2-2ab as the first portion of the answer.

So now you will do the same with the b in (a+b).
Then you get -2b^2+ab.

Now you add a^2-2ab and -2b^2+ab to get a^2 -2b^2-ab .