First you want to drop the parenthesis. If there is a “+” sign, you do not have to change anything. If there is a “-“ sign, you have to distribute the negative in order to simplify, so imagine you are distributing -1 to 7x + 3 to make it -7x -3.
So, you now have x^2 + 3x - 4 + 16 -5 - 7x -3. (I evaluated the 4^2 to 16)
Now, what you want to do now is to combine like terms. Notice that there is only one x^2, so it is the same. There are two terms that have “x”. 3x and -7x react like normal numbers and they form -4x. The numbers who don’t have x on them you combine like terms.
Answer is x^2 - 4x - 12
