Question

Can someone please explain this to me? I've been staring at this for 10 minutes.

answer choices:

always, always

always, never

never, always

never, never

Answer 1

always, never. Since you are multiplying the same number that you are dividing 1 by, they would essentially cancel out and leave you with 1. If a and b are both negative, then because a negative multiplied by another negative is always positive, it would never be equal to -1

Answer 2

never and never

2 negatives multiplied by each other = a positive number

lets look at the first one:

let a = -2

you then have -2*(1/-2) = -2 * (-.5) = 1 ( positive 1 )

2nd eq, multiply a negative by a negative:

a = -3, b=-4, -3*-4 = 12 ( positive 12)

both equations give positive numbers for answers