You can
put this solution on YOUR website!Given:
.
.
Notice that both terms have the same denominator. Therefore, they can be combined by putting
both their numerators over the common denominator. When you do that you get:
.
.
Now notice that you can factor 3 out of the numerator to get:
.
.
Then notice that you have the factor
common in both the numerator and the denominator.
Therefore, you can cancel them.
.
.
and you are left with just
as the simplified form of the original problem.
.
Your answer was:
.
(3x-21)/(x-7) <--- OK here, but you should have used the parentheses that I added here
to make sure that anyone who read it could tell what your numerator and denominator
were. The way you wrote it actually should be read:
.
instead of
which is what the parentheses tell you
.
3(x-7)/(x-7) <--- OK here. Note the parentheses in the denominator for clarity
.
All you had to do now was cancel the two (x - 7) terms to get the answer of 3. So you were OK
up to this point. Good job!
.
=3x/x-7 <---- No, this takes you back to the original form of the problem.
=21/x-7 <---- No, this also takes you back to what you started with.
(