What is the opposite of distributing?

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Multiple Choice

What is the opposite of distributing?

Explanation:
Distributing is applying a factor outside parentheses to every term inside, using the distributive property. The operation that goes in reverse is factoring, where you pull out a common factor from several terms to rewrite the expression as a single product. For example, 12x + 15 can be rewritten as 3(4x + 5), showing how a sum with a common factor comes from distributing 3 across the terms inside. The other processes—adding, subtracting, or multiplying—don’t reverse that step. Adding or subtracting changes terms; multiplying scales terms, but none of these reverse the idea of turning a sum back into a product by factoring out a common factor.

Distributing is applying a factor outside parentheses to every term inside, using the distributive property. The operation that goes in reverse is factoring, where you pull out a common factor from several terms to rewrite the expression as a single product. For example, 12x + 15 can be rewritten as 3(4x + 5), showing how a sum with a common factor comes from distributing 3 across the terms inside. The other processes—adding, subtracting, or multiplying—don’t reverse that step. Adding or subtracting changes terms; multiplying scales terms, but none of these reverse the idea of turning a sum back into a product by factoring out a common factor.

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