In week 5 of precal we learned how to factor equations with 4 terms. Using the box method makes doing these things a breeze. Let’s use the equation X^2+6x+2x+12 as an example. we start by drawing a box in the middle and putting the greatest term (usually x^2) at the top left and leave the shortest term (usually a number with no variables) at the bottom right with the terms in the middle (usually variable with no exponent/1) in the other corners. I like to add a positive sign or negative sign on all of the numbers so I don’t make any mistakes.

Now that we have all of our terms in a box, we have to find what goes into all of these terms and place them outside of the box like so:

Now that we have found what goes into the terms we re-write the equation. for this equation it will be (X+6) (X+2) and that is completely factored.

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