How do you simplify a + 2c - 5b - c + a - b ?

Mar 17, 2016

$a + a + 2 c - c - 5 b - b$
=$2 a + c - 6 b$

Aug 20, 2016

$\textcolor{red}{2 a} \textcolor{o l i v e}{- 6 b} \textcolor{b l u e}{+ c}$

Explanation:

This is addition of algebraic terms.

In Algebra we may only add terms that are like (the same).

There are 6 terms - we can re-arrange them to have the like terms together. The terms are usually arranged in alphabetical order.

$\textcolor{red}{a} \textcolor{b l u e}{+ 2 c} \textcolor{o l i v e}{- 5 b} \textcolor{b l u e}{- c} \textcolor{red}{+ a} \textcolor{o l i v e}{- b}$

= $\textcolor{red}{a} \textcolor{red}{+ a} \textcolor{o l i v e}{- 5 b} \textcolor{o l i v e}{- b} \textcolor{b l u e}{+ 2 c} \textcolor{b l u e}{- c}$

We only add the numerical coefficients (the numbers in front of the terms) and keep the variables the same.

= $\textcolor{red}{2 a} \textcolor{o l i v e}{- 6 b} \textcolor{b l u e}{+ c}$

Remember that if no number is written it means there is 1.

$\textcolor{red}{a = 1 a}$