The Singing Hedgehog Guide to:
Indices in Algebra
It is really important to remember that the power tells us
how many things are multiplied together.
So x3 means "three lots of x multiplied together".
It is NOT "three lots of x"!
This means we can only combine terms in the same unknown:
| x3.x2 = x.x.x.x.x = x5 |
x3.y2 = x.x.x.y.y = x3.y2 ≠ (xy)5 |
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