Hello, everybody.

I am self-teaching myself elementary algebra since I never did that wonderful of a job of learning it in high school. I made it to factoring, where I finally learned how to do so generally well; however, I stumbled across a problem that I don't really know how to solve, though I do have the answer in the back which I consulted. Here is the equation to be factored:



And here's the solution:



I would greatly appreciate if someone could break this problem down for me so I can see how this answer was obtained, because I can't figure it out and the book doesn't break it down anywhere; it's just another exercise at the end of the chapter. I appreciate it very much and I thank all of you for your time. :]

Colton

You can use the formula

Thank you red_dog. It never even occurred to me to do that. Now I feel partially foolish. haha