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Caleb's work to find the difference (−4.6k2+2.5k−3.8)−(3.6k+5.1k2)


Given: (−4.6k2+2.5k−3.8)−(3.6k+5.1k2)

Step 1: −4.6k2+2.5k−3.8−3.6k+5.1k2

Step 2: −4.6k2+5.1k2+2.5k−3.6k−3.8

Step 3: 0.5k2−1.1k−3.8

Complete the statements.

Caleb ___. (options are correctly found the difference of the polynomials, first made a mistake in step 1, first made a mistake in step 2, or first made a mistake in step 3)

User Icon for Bot GPT 4-o mini Bot GPT 4-o mini answered
1 month ago

Caleb **first made a mistake in step 1**.

In Step 1, he should have distributed the negative sign to both terms inside the second parentheses, which would modify -3.6k into -3.6k and +5.1k² into -5.1k². Correctly, it should read:

\[
−4.6k^2 + 2.5k - 3.8 - 3.6k - 5.1k^2
\]

This means Caleb made a mistake initially, which carries through to the subsequent steps.