How do you simplify \frac { p ^ { 2} - 2p - 35} { p - 7}?

1 Answer
May 5, 2017

p+5

Explanation:

Factor p^2-2p-35:

((p-7)(p+5))/((p-7))

Cancel (p-7) on both top and bottom:

= p+5

Note that you can't plug in 7 into this because plugging in 7 into the initial fraction would give an error because that
would be dividing by 0

(It is assumed that p !=7)