From the course: Preparing for the GMAT

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Fake exponent rules

Fake exponent rules

From the course: Preparing for the GMAT

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Fake exponent rules

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- [Instructor] So, what are fake exponent rules, you may ask. They're rules that people sometimes think are real, but, in fact, have no basis in reality. In this video, we'll go over some common mistakes people make when working with exponents. One of the mistakes I see people make sometimes is when we have a situation like this: What if I had x plus y squared? Well, isn't that just the same thing as x squared plus y squared? No, it is not. We would have to FOIL the expression. In other words, what we would really want to do is do x plus y times x plus y, which would be x squared plus two x y plus y squared. That's one rule that I see people confuse sometimes. Another one is sometimes people think you can do this: Well, what if I had something like three cubed times two to the fourth? Would that be the same thing as six to the seventh? Or, maybe six to the twelfth? No, there's no such rule. We have different bases, and we have different powers, so we cannot do those simplifications…

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