Question

A student provided the following solution for solving an equation. What mistake did the student make?

a) In the first line of the solution, the distributive property was applied incorrectly.
b) In the second line of the solution, like terms were combined incorrectly.
c) In the last line of the solution, the final answer was subtracted from each side instead of isolating the variable.
d) All of the above.

Answer 1

The student made a mistake in the second line of the solution by combining like terms incorrectly.

Step-by-step explanation:

The student made mistake b) In the second line of the solution, like terms were combined incorrectly.

To solve an equation correctly, it is important to properly combine like terms. Like terms are terms that have the same variable(s) raised to the same power(s). In this case, the student incorrectly combined like terms, which led to an incorrect solution.