00:03
For this problem, the first step that we will apply is applying the distributive property.
00:09
Well, there's really only one small place that will apply the distributive property, which is on the left side of the equation.
00:15
You see that negative sign in front of the 2x plus 2.
00:19
So we'll go ahead and distribute that.
00:21
That will leave us with this equation.
00:24
5x minus 2x, equal to x plus.
00:29
Plus, and we can actually remove these parentheses on the right hand side due to the fact that we're basically multiplying by a positive 1.
00:41
So plus 3x minus 5.
00:43
We now want to combine like terms on each side.
00:46
So on the left side we have a 3x minus 2.
00:49
On the right side we have 4x minus 5.
00:54
Finally, this recommended third step is to isolate the variables, which means to get the variable on one side of the equation.
01:02
When we do this, we'll move the 3x over to the right because we'll be left with a positive x on that right hand side...