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What do you call terms of the same type, terms that are like
each other?
like terms
We want to complete the following definition.
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In an algebraic expression, ? are terms that have the same variables raised to the same exponents. |
In an equation we often have terms of the same type. When this happens, we can combine these terms to simplify an expression or solve an equation. Let's consider an everyday life example.
We want to know how much one chocolate bar costs. We can say that we bought two chocolate bars and paid $3 for them. This is the same as saying that we have one chocolate bar two times.
This is only possible when we have two objects of the same type. Otherwise we cannot add them. For example, if we bought a chocolate bar and an apple, we could not count them together.
We can follow the same thought process with math reasoning. When we have an algebraic expression, we want to identify terms of the type. Then we can simplify the expression. Terms that are the same type have the same variables raised to the same exponents. They are called like terms and we combine them to simplify the expression. x + x &= 3 &⇓ 2x &= 3 Finally, we can complete the given sentence.
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In an algebraic expression, like terms are terms that have the same variables raised to the same exponents. |