Skip to content
Your progress

Checking your sign-in…

Who's learning?

Each profile keeps its own read lessons, badges, streak, and practice scores on this device.

Lesson 10 of 15

Putting a number in to find out

Show on a big screen

8 min

Text size

Six lines are on a board. Some of them are wrong. How can you find which?

Put x = 4 into both forms.
Step 1 of 4
  1. Put x = 4 into both forms.
  2. (x + 3)(x + 5) → 63.
  3. x² + 8x + 15 → 63. Match.
  4. Shortcut x² + 15 → 31. No match.

Put the same number into the old line and into each rewrite. A rewrite is a new form of the old line. A different answer shows that rewrite is wrong.

Rule: put a value into both forms and compare. One mismatch proves the rewrite wrong.

Two lines that are equal give the same number at every value.

A match proves less than a mismatch. At x = 0, (x + 3)(x + 5) and the wrong shortcut both give 15. They match at this one value, by chance.

Slide x. Look for a mismatch. Try each rewrite.

Loading lab…

Try the lab to finish this lesson.