Firstly, the best thing to do is to expand the bracket. To expand, you multiply everything at the front of the bracket by everything inside of the bracket. 4(s+2) becomes 4s (4*s) = 8 (4*2) Then put this back into the equation, and this becomes; 4s+8+s-1 Then collect the like terms (these are the similar ones) 4s+s becomes 5s 8-1 becomes 7. Therefore, the simplified equation is 5s+7