satyreyes wrote:

Iris wrote:

Use the properties of exponents to simplify the expression
http://assess.math.sunysb.edu:8080/tmp/ … fhijoh.png

The answer is:
http://assess.math.sunysb.edu:8080/tmp/ … gakani.png but I need to figure out how to get there.

Hey Iris!   The question looks borked from here.  That garbage at the beginning -- the square root sign with the angle under it, the empty absolute value bars, and the hollow dot -- doesn't mean anything in the context of this problem.  Someone probably meant to write a fraction there -- probably something like (a)/(b*c^(1/2)), based on the intended answer -- but some computer error caused it to come across wrong.  You should alert whoever's responsible for administering placement tests.

Hope this is helpful!

Well, that makes me feel a good deal better lol.  I looked and that and was very discouraged. 
Thank you!  I'm sure I'll have a lot more questions.

Iris wrote:

Use the properties of exponents to simplify the expression

satyreyes wrote:

Rereading my answer to your question made me slap myself on the head.    That garbage is garbage and you should definitely contact someone about it, but I figured out what the question is supposed to look like.  This is what you should be seeing:




There!!

Now, if the question had looked like this in the first place, would you know how to solve it?

But what about the absolute value symbols? Or am I thinking too much? Or too little?

satyreyes wrote:

Rereading my answer to your question made me slap myself on the head.    That garbage is garbage and you should definitely contact someone about it, but I figured out what the question is supposed to look like.  This is what you should be seeing:


http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i117/ … 3f0a9b.png

There!!

Now, if the question had looked like this in the first place, would you know how to solve it?

I think so. 
Writing with a tablet is fifty times harder than drawing with one.  Eeeek.

So, the answer I got to the problem the way Satyr wrote it is the same as the answer they give.

Last edited by Iris (01-08-2013 10:55:01 PM)

satyreyes wrote:

Hmm.  There's some right and some wrong in there!  In Steps 1 and 2, it looks like you're squaring all of the exponents -- but there's no reason to do this and it only makes your life harder   Instead, begin the problem with Step 3.  In Step 3, you correctly started with the original problem.  Correctly ignoring the square root sign for now, you canceled out exponents for the variables that are found on both the top and bottom of the fraction.  That gave you c*b^2 on the top and a^2 on the bottom.  Then you took the square root of that fraction in Step 4 by dividing all exponents by two.  The b^2 became just b, the a^2 became just a, and the c became c^(1/2), because c is the same as c^1.

Okay, I wondered why the tutorial I found told me to do that when dealing with exponential fractions under a radical.  Made no sense, but I went with it. 
Thank you for your help!  I really appreciate it.