Factoring 2-Factor out a negative GCF

Sick of ads?​ Sign up for MathVids Premium
Taught by YourMathGal
  • Currently 4.0/5 Stars.
9308 views | 2 ratings
Part of video series
Meets NCTM Standards:
Lesson Summary:

In this lesson, you will learn how to factor out a negative sign from the greatest common factor, and how to recognize opposites, such as a-b and b-a. The transcript walks you through several examples of how to factor out a negative sign, and demonstrates how you can recognize that two terms are opposites. This knowledge will be useful when factoring and can help you recognize alternative forms of the same equation.

Lesson Description:

This is part 2 on factoring, and covers how to factor out a negative sign, and also how to recognize opposites such as a - b and b - a.

More free YouTube videos by Julie Harland are organized at http://yourmathgal.com

Questions answered by this video:
  • How do you factor out the greatest common factor of a polynomial?
  • How do you factor out a negative GCF?
  • What happens if the greatest common factor is negative?
  • How do you factor -6x + 9?
  • How do you factor a polynomial if the first term is negative?
  • How can you factor -9x^2 - 12x by taking out the GCF?
  • How do you know what goes in the parentheses when you factor a polynomial?
  • What does -16a^2b + 24ab^4 + 8ab factor into?
  • How do you factor a polynomial that has more than one variable?
  • How do you factor a polynomial by factoring out the negative greatest common factor?
  • How can you factor a -1 from a polynomial?
  • How do you factor -3x + 14?
  • What does 5x-8 become if you factor our a -1 from both terms?
  • How can you factor -3x-16?
  • How do you find the opposite of a polynomial such as 3x - 9?
  • What is an easy way of writing the opposite of the difference of binomials such as a - b?
  • Why does 7y - 8 = -1(8 - 7y)?
  • Staff Review

    • Currently 4.0/5 Stars.
    This lesson does a bunch more examples of factoring out the GCF. This time, however, the twist is that the GCF of the polynomials is negative. Also discussed is factoring out a -1 and switching all of the signs.