ASVAB Math: Don’t Mess Up Negative Signs

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:01]All righty, so here we have what is the coefficient of X when this expression here below is simplified?

[00:00:09]And so the expression that we have is -27x - 2 minus parentheses -2x - 13. So, first and foremost, everybody, two things.

[00:00:21]One, I agree with you if you think that these negatives are mighty distracting because they are. That's a lot of negative values. So, I hear you. So, what's more important is to understand what the goal is before we get distracted with shiny object syndrome.

[00:00:37]Again, it says, "What is the coefficient of X?"

[00:00:42]Everybody, because we're adding and subtracting, does this -2 or does this -13, do they matter right now? If we're just looking for the coefficient of the X?

[00:00:55]Yeah, those don't particularly matter.

[00:00:57]I'll show you. I'll prove this to you.

[00:00:59]We have -27x - 2 minus -2x - 13.

[00:01:07]So, what we have here, everybody, is yeah, we can distribute the negative to each of these. Negative by negative, that gives me a positive 2x.

[00:01:15]And then a negative by -13, that turns into a positive 13. Sure, we can do that. There's no problem with doing that. And then getting rid of the parentheses on the left.

[00:01:27]Where the problem lies is knowing what to care about.

[00:01:31]Because it says, "What is the coefficient of X?" A coefficient means the number in front of the number being multiplied by that value. So, we have X, the coefficient here is -27.

[00:01:45]But the answer is not -27 because we have a two on this X over here.

[00:01:50]So, what we truly need to do, everyone, is we need to combine like terms.

[00:01:54]We need to combine these two terms here, the -27x and the positive 2x.

[00:02:01]Those are the two terms that we're going to combine because again, we are only trying to analyze what's in front of the X.

[00:02:11]That's why.

[00:02:12]So, with that, what we truly have is -27x + 2x, which what this is is basically like 27 - 2, but we keep the sign of the bigger number.

[00:02:25]So, it's going to be 25, but because the bigger number is the 27, the negative, this will going to be This is now negative 20 five X.

[00:02:39]So, boom. It's not -29 because that two is no longer negative. It's positive now after we distributed. So, again, it's a trick. A is close, but the correct answer here is D.

[00:02:52]-25.