Question 243115
Hello Manda, 
You are correct. Good going! We can go one more step. (See below)
Since I didn't see how you did it I couldn't say if your way was fastest. Here's the way I'd do it. I see in the first two terms a common thread of ay, so we could pull that out like:
ay(x-1) 
Now notice in the last two terms the common thread is a, so we can rewrite that:
a(x-1) Notice that these two have (x-1) therefore we can write this as:
(ay+a)(x-1) We could go one more step and write it as:
a(y+1)(x-1) Multiply all that out and we should arrive at the original expression. 
RJ Toftness
www.math-unlock.com