ShmoopTube

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Here’s your shmoop du jour…

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Simplify the polynomial 9x cubed minus 6x squared plus 3x minus 1…

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minus… 4x squared minus 2x plus 1… minus… 3x minus 2.

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And here are the potential answers...

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The problem is testing our ability to apply a negative to a quantity

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so we can rewrite the whole problem to just get rid of the parentheses altogether.

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So we get 9x cubed minus 6x squared plus 3x minus 1 minus 4x

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squared plus 2x minus 1 minus 3x plus 2.

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Note here and here and here how the negatives got flipped…

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And now we can just combine terms.

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There’s only one cube so leave that alone… and we can rewrite everything as…

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…9x cubed minus 10x squared plus 2x… and that’s it.

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Our answer is D. As in, "Done."

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