Big Ideas Math: Modeling Real Life, Grade 7
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Big Ideas Math: Modeling Real Life, Grade 7 View details
1. Multiplying Integers
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Exercise 34 Page 53

Pay close attention to the order of operations.

- 700

Practice makes perfect

According to the order of operations, expressions inside parentheses are evaluated first, followed by exponents, then multiplication and division, and finally addition and subtraction are evaluated last. We can use the acronym PEMDAS to help us remember the correct order!

pemdas
For the given expression, we can perform the multiplication from left to right one pair at a time. - 5(- 7)(- 20) Let's do it! Keep in mind that when we multiply two negative numbers, we get a positive number.

Operation Before Simplification After Simplification
Multiply - 5( - 7)(- 20) 35(- 20)
Multiply 35( - 20) - 700

The expression is equal to - 700.

Alternative Solution

Using a Calculator
We can also evaluate this expression using a calculator. To do so, we type it as shown below.