Question

What is the value of 9(4x - 4), when x=5?

Answer 1

I believe by asking you to do all multiplication first they are asking you to demonstrate the distributive property, this means we can distribute the 9 through the parenthesis by multiplying it by each part inside the parenthesis, this gives us:

36x - 36

now we can substitute 5 in for x to get:

36(5) -36

180-36

144