How do you subtract (-5m^2-m)-(3m^2+4m-5)?

1 Answer
Dec 10, 2014

When dealing with expressions like this, you must always concert yourself with like terms. The expression can be rewritten as

-5m^2 -m -3m^2 -4m +5

Now, you can only add or substract terms that have m^2 with terms that have m^2; likewise, terms that have m can only be added to or substarcted from terms that have m. So, we would get

-5m^2 - 3m^2 -m - 4m +5 = -8m^2 - 5m +5