FOIL
Revision as of 12:00, 16 August 2008 by Isabella2296 (talk | contribs)
FOIL, standing for first, outside, inside, last, is a mnemonic device for remembering the distributive property when two binomials are multiplied.
Here are a few examples.
First we multiply the first terms, and
, yielding
.
Then, the outside terms, and
, giving us
.
Next, the inside terms, and
, which is
.
Finally, we multiply the last terms, and
, which is
.
Thus, our answer is , which, when simplified, gives us a final answer of
.
See also
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