Question

A student expanded an expression, as shown. Is the student's work correct? Explain why or why not.

Answer 1

No, the work is not correct. The distributive property was not used properly to expand the expression. Negative 6 should be multiplied by both terms in the parentheses. The second product should be -6 times -2/13 to get positive 12/13.

Answer 2

The work is incorrect.

(-6) multiplies both terms inside parentheses. For some reason, the student changed the sign of that multiplier for the second term. The second term of the result should have a positive sign, the result of multiplying (-6)(-2/13) = +12/13.