you are asked to faktor this expression you can do this! use your mathrobatics to conquer all that lies before you that means to break it up into two parenthesis this is called a "quadratic expression" and it needs to be broken up into two groups of parenthesis, each that has only two things inside it - something with only two things, or two "terms", is call a "binomial" well, how are you supposed to do that? with your brain ... or the internet, whichever is more convenient step one is to look at the first, and last, coefficients in this case, they are one and two; the coefficient of just "x" is one, because there is a, sort of, invisible "times one" infront of the x we multiply them together one times two is not simple, but it equals two now, think about the faktors of two ... are there faktors of two we can combine to make three? we only have one option, but those actually werk! we're going to replace that middle term ... ... with the sum of the faktors: one-plus-two then drop those parenthesis now, you're thinking "how does THIS help?!!" don't worry - things are going to get much worse group them into two different groups would it be possible to faktor the left group? yes, they each have an x in common move that equis out to the left multiply by x infront, and restore the remaining faktors now, focus on the right group of parenthesis what are the faktors of its elements? do they have any common faktors? yes, a two pull that two out, and to the left, of the parenthesis multiply the two infront, and restore inside the parenthesis ok, this is somehow much worse think of this all as one big group then think of (x+1) as a single term as though each term has (x+1) as a faktor pull that (x+1) out to the left and see what happens multiply by (x+1) in front, and restore the faktors you can convert those brakettes into parenthesis wow - look at that! it finally seems better now we just need to check if this is correct