Remember that only like terms can be combined. An expression in simplest form has no like terms and parentheses.
4b-5
Practice makes perfect
An expression in simplest form has no like terms and parentheses. Let's first rewrite this expression as a sum to identify all like terms.
4b - 24 + 19
⇓
4b + ( - 24) + 19
Remember that like terms — constant terms or terms with the same variable and the same exponent — can be combined. In this case, we have one b-term and two constants. We will combine like terms to simplify the expression.
