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I know how to expand brackets such as the following in general, using the foil or crab-claw methods, but my tutor mentioned that there is a universal formula/algorithm for an expansion.

E.g Bracket:

(x + y) (2x - 7xy)

Please can you tell me what it is?

Thanks,

Max.

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    Nothing fancy, just take the sum of each term in the first bracket times each term in the second: $(x) (2x) + (x)(-7xy) + (y)(2x) + (y)(-7xy)$.2012-10-01
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    Hi Robert, the foil and crab-claw methods use that implementation, that's the method that I generally use. I thought that there was a formula (something fancy!) in order to get the result a bit quicker?2012-10-01
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    Perhaps you're meaning to talk about expansions involving the use of Pascal's triangle?2012-10-01
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    @Joe no, I'm not.2012-10-01

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