in expansion such as (a-b)5 how do we know which term should be taken as positive or negetive?

No need to remeber whether the term is positive or negative. Take just (- b) and its power then if the power is even then negative sign will remove, thus term will be positive and if it is odd the term will be negative.

CHEERS!

  • 1

As lokesh said..... the reason for the sign is becuz of the power of (-b) either even or odd....

So obviously first term will give (-b) a power of 0. Hence first term is positive... while second term, (-b) will have a power of 1 and will be negative.. Taking this into consideration.

Alternate terms will be negative starting from the first term and positive.

.

Hence,

(a-b)5 = +first term - second term + third term - fourth term + 5th term - 6th term.

.

Notice the signs between terms.

  • 0
What are you looking for?