• Are you a high school math teacher by chance?

    Yep.

    Because you’re using a rigid definition of simplify that I don’t necessarily agree with.

    You don’t agree with Maths textbooks? 😂

    “And told you to simplify, what would you do?” - I would ask you what on Earth it’s supposed to say, given it’s formatted all weird! 😂

    • the_tab_key@lemmy.world
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      15 days ago

      It’s raw text on my side, looks fine. It might be fixed now? Not sure how the formatting works for equations on Lemmy.

      And correct, I don’t agree with whatever you are interpreting from your math textbooks because “simplify” literally means to make the equation easier to understand. You are arguing that “expand and simplify” is the exact same thing as “simplify”… Which if they were, it would just be in word, wouldn’t it… Sometimes factoring is prudent. Other times expansion is necessary. This is exemplified by the math I gave in the previous comment.

      And thanks for the downvotes. I hope you don’t treat your students the same way when they question your ultimate wisdom by dismissing them outright. I certainly don’t to mine.

      • “simplify” literally means to make the equation easier to understand

        Nope. It means to present it in the simplest way possible. e.g. 5/10=1/2.

        You are arguing that “expand and simplify” is the exact same thing as “simplify”

        No I’m not. I’m saying “expand and simplify” is a thing in all high school Maths textbooks, “factor and simplify” isn’t a thing in any of them.

        “Sometimes factoring is prudent” - if you’re trying to solve an equation, yes, but solving and simplifying aren’t the same thing. If I arrive at an answer of 5/10 then I have solved but not simplified. Sometimes it’s not even possible to simplify, because the answer is already in the simplest form possible, such as an answer of 1/2. I teach students when to recognise when something can be simplified and when it can’t. Your original contention was that the Term was already simplified, and it wasn’t.

        “And thanks for the downvotes.” - I downvote anything that is incorrect, just like a student would lose marks for same.