How do you simplify $- 5 (8 - 12)$ $-5(8 - 12)$ ?

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Answer 1 · 2018-05-08T17:13:52

$20$ $20$

Step one would be to distribute $- 5$ $-5$ to $8$ $8$ and $- 12$ $-12$ .

$- 5 (8) = - 40$ $-5(8) = -40$
$- 5 (- 12) = 60$ $-5(-12) = 60$

This makes your expression looks like this:

$- 40 + 60$ $-40 + 60$

You can simplify this pretty easily, as $- 40 + 60$ $-40 + 60$ is the same thing as $60 - 40$ $60-40$ , which is $20$ $20$ .

Another, possibly easier, way to do it would be to use the order of operations and do the expression inside the parentheses first,

$8 - 12 = - 4$ $8-12=-4$

which would make it look like this...

$- 5 (- 4)$ $-5(-4)$

...and then multiply to get $20$ $20$ .

How do you simplify −5(8−12) -5(8 - 12) ?