To answer this question we need to use PEMDAS. PEMDAS stands for parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction. This order is the order that helps us know what we are supposed to do first in expressions like these. We first need to look at the parentheses and solve what is inside them. In this expression we can see that in the parentheses is an exponent. So in order to solve what is in the parentheses we need to solve the exponent. Solving the exponent we get 16. Now we can solve inside the parentheses getting us a 2. Once we have that we can fix up our equation to look like -12 / 3 x 2 +2. We can see that we have no more parentheses and no more exponents but it is still confusing to simply this. So we have to look at what is next in our PEMDAS, which is multiplication and division. Whichever one we do first won’t matter but it is preferable to start with what is on the left. In this case it is division, so -12/3 is -4. Now our equation is -4 x 2 +2. So we multiply, -4 x 2 is -8. Now finally we can add since there is no subtraction. -8+2 is 6. So our final answer is 6.