To remove brackets is to multiply the term outside the brackets by each term inside. Factorising an expression is to write it as a product of its factors. Check your understanding of the process with ...

Parsing algebraic expressions is always a pain. If you need to compute, say, 2+4*2, the answer should be the same as (2 + (4 *2)), not ((2 + 4) * 2) — in other words, the right answer is 10, not 12.

In algebra, letters are used to stand for values that can change (variables) or for values that aren’t known (unknowns). A term is a number or letter on its own, or numbers and letters multiplied ...