Griffin is thinking over his college choices. The local community college offers a two-year degree and charges $2,500 per year in fees and tuition. A nearby public university offers a four- year degree that interests Griffin, but the annual fee and tuition there is $6,800. If Griffin attended the community college for two years and then transferred to the university to complete the final two years of a four-year degree instead of attending the university for all four years, how much would Griffin save?

Hi! I'm happy to help!

To solve this, we have to use the order of operations, or PEMDAS. (parenthesis, exponents, multiplication or division, and addition or subtraction)

We will start out with parenthesis. Since there are no expressions inside of the parenthesis, we can remove them.

But, before we do that, we have a positive negative, the negative form of positive is negative, so we remove the plus sign as well as the parenthesis.

1.7+(-5)+(3.27)=

1.7-5+3.27=

Now since we have no exponents, multiplication, or division, we move on to addition or subtraction. We have some of both, so we move from left to right.

Our first equation is 1.7-5, so we do that first.

1.7-5+3.27=

-3.3+3.27=

Now, we only have one addition problem left, -3.3+3.27, so we'll do that.

-3.3+3.27=

-0.03

After this equation is fully simplified, we are at -0.03!

I hope this was helpful, keep learning! :D