How do you solve #1-(3.1+6.05)#?

1 Answer
Nov 21, 2016

-8.15

Explanation:

You have a situation where there is a negative sign in front of a parenthesis. It's actually a short hand way of writing "-1" only the "1" is invisible because it's implied.
Because there is a negative 1 in front of a parenthesis, it means it's being multiplied by whatever is in the parenthesis. This is known as the distributive law of multiplication.

The first thing you would want to do is ignore the positive 1, then distribute the negative one throughout the "stuff" in the parenthesis.
Negative 1 times 3.1 is -3.1, and negative 1 times 6.05 is -6.05. Once this is complete, the parenthesis are removed, and you're left with some uncomplicated numbers to combine.

1 - (3.1 + 6.05)
(I multiplied the 3.1 and the 6.05 by the negative 1.)
So now I get:

1 -3.1 - 6.05

Combining these values I have my final answer: -8.15