# Thread: Questions about math concept as whole, not particular problems.

1. ## Questions about math concept as whole, not particular problems.

I didn't realize what I was doing before was cheating... I would never want to do anything against the rules! I can't afford to with straight A's and looking for a scholarship... So I decided to reword my question, and instead of having it as a specific question to a specific problem for it to actually be some form of help.

Question 1: When you have a monomial with all like terms and a negative exponent, would you want to bring the negative exponent down first to get rid of it, or to just add up like terms and subtract the negative exponet from the positive.

Question 2: When FOILing, when you are foiling two different variables together would you make them one or separate. So for example, X * Y = XY or X + Y?

Question 3: What is exponential order? I did a Google search, and there is no where that can teach me how to do this...

Thanks!

2. Originally Posted by Helpmepleasemath12

Question 2: When FOILing, when you are foiling two different variables together would you make them one or separate. So for example, X * Y = XY or X + Y?
When expanding follow this $(a+b)(c+d) = ac+ad+bc+bd$

3. Originally Posted by Helpmepleasemath12
Question 1: When you have a monomial with all like terms and a negative exponent, would you want to bring the negative exponent down first to get rid of it, or to just add up like terms and subtract the negative exponet from the positive.
There are some problems with this question. A monomial, by definition, only has one term. This is an example of a monomial: $x^3y^4z$. Also, if you have a polynomial with lots of like terms, such as this one: $x^{-3} + 5x^{-3} + 51x^{-3}$ then it should be easy to see that it's preferable to re-express as $57x^{-3}$ than $\frac{1}{x^3} + \frac{5}{x^3} + \frac{51}{x^3}$. So I'm not sure what you're asking.

Originally Posted by Helpmepleasemath12
Question 3: What is exponential order? I did a Google search, and there is no where that can teach me how to do this...
Also not sure what this means. Are we talking about order of operations? There is big-O notation like $O(2^x)$ but I assume you don't mean that.

You don't have to be so general with your questions that it's hard for us to tell what you mean. You can make up examples (out of thin air) and that won't be cheating at all.