Expanding & Factorising Brackets (Cambridge (CIE) IGCSE Maths: Core): Flashcards

Expanding a bracket means multiplying the term outside the bracket by each term inside the bracket.

So becomes from .

False.

can be thought of as .

Multiplying two negatives gives a positive, so the answer is .

You can simplify before expanding by first collecting like terms inside the brackets to give .

This can also be written as .

To simplify expressions like you expand the brackets then collect like terms.

So expands to give .
The terms are then collected to give .

False.

You cannot cancel the 3's because is an expression, not an equation.

You can only cancel both sides by 3 if you had an equation, like .

The highest power of will come from multiplying the outside term by the inside term with the highest power.

The highest power of in is .

This can be found by multiplying outside the bracket by the highest power, , from inside the bracket.

To factorise simple expressions like :

1. Find the highest common factor of 6 and 8 (which is 2)

2. Write this factor outside a set of brackets

3. Write inside the brackets what you must multiply the factor by to get the original expression

So becomes .

False.

The highest common factor in is , not .

True.

Factorisation can be thought of as the opposite of expanding brackets.

This result can be checked by expanding the expression.

So expands to give .

If that was the original question, then the factorised expression is correct.