How do you simplify 12[642]?

1 Answer
Jul 3, 2016

5

Explanation:

The first step is always to count the number of terms.
There must be a final answer for each term before they can be added or subtracted.

This is only one term, but there are 2 terms inside the parentheses.

12[642]=12[616]

=12[10]=5

Or using the distributive law, we can get two terms at the beginning:

12×612×42

=312×16

=38=5