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I'm stuck on this equation. These are the steps I've done so far:

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And after this I'm stuck. 1 - 8? It makes no sense. I have no clue about what I did wrong.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Grimestock
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    If it was actually $1-8$ then you can replace it with $-7$ since that is what $1-8$ is equal to... in actuality, there is a typo and it should have been $1\color{red}{a}-8$, not $1-8$ since you factored out a $2$ from both top and bottom of the fraction on the left. – JMoravitz Jun 12 '17 at 18:33
  • I'm confused. If 1-8 makes no sense, then why the heck did you do it? Is this your answer or someone elses? Anyway. $\frac {6a^2 -48a}{2a-16} =\frac {6a(a-8)}{2(a-8)}=3a\frac {2(a-8)}{2(a-8)} = 3a$. – fleablood Jun 12 '17 at 18:42
  • You dropped the a in "48a"-- it completely disappeared for no reason. And you dropped the a in "2a"-- it completely disappeared for no reason. What does factor out of both is 2 so you gate $\frac {3a^2- 24a}{a - 8}$ Then you can see that $2a$ factors out of the top to get $\frac{3a(a-8)}{a-8}$ which... you can see you can "cross out" the "a-8". – fleablood Jun 12 '17 at 18:47
  • Oops. Never mind. That's a plus/not minus on top. Factoring we get: $\frac {23a(a+8)}{2(a-8)} \frac {(a+7)}{(a+7)(a+8)}$. Canceling we get $\frac {3a}{a-8}$. – fleablood Jun 12 '17 at 18:53

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the mistake is in the first line: $$\frac{2(3a^2+24a)}{2(a-8)}=\frac{3a^2+24a}{a-8}$$

Dr. Sonnhard Graubner
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