What is 3x -10x?

Answer 1

13

Answer 2

-7x

3-10 = -7 the x just follows.

The trick you need to remember is that 3x is a quantity of the numeral 3 multiplied by whatever quantity is represented by the variable X. So, if X were equal to 1, the above expression of 3x - 10x would simply be -7. However, if X were equal to 50, the expression would suddenly turn into a calculation of 3 * 50 (or, simply, 150) minus 10 * 50 (500) which would have a result of -350. Dropping the X from either term (or both terms) of the expression would change the calculation completely.

Another way to think of it is that when one is doing math of something simple such as 8 - 6, resulting in two, it could be considered: 4x - 3x = x when x is equal to 2. 8 equals 4x in this case since x equals 2. The same holds true for 6 and 3x. All that algebraic variables do is replace an unknown factor in a calculation. They do not change the rules of basic mathematical operations.