Jimmy applied the distributive property to write the equation below.

Question

24 + 6 = 6 (4 + 2)

What is Jimmy’s error?
Jimmy did not write the common factor in the correct place.
Jimmy used 6 as the factor, which is not common to 24 and 6.
Jimmy did not apply the correct operations to the expressions.
Jimmy wrote two expressions that are not equivalent.

Answer 1

Jimmy's error is that he used 6 as the factor, which is not common to both 24 and 6.

The distributive property involves factoring out a common factor from both terms in an expression. In this case, 6 is a factor of 6, but it is not a factor of 24. A correct application of the distributive property would require identifying a common factor of both terms. In this case, the common factor you could factor out is 6 from the number 6, but not from 24. Therefore, the correct application of the distributive property is not represented in his equation.