algebra

So, class began painful as the professor began to talk about function, f(x). It seemed as if I wasn't going to be able to figure out what the heck he was talking about. But as he continued to talk about it and gave examples I was able to stew about and come up with why it works in how I think. I now understand that the x variable in f(x)=X^5+X^3 doesn't get added together. It seems weird that we would go from simplifying these functions to not simplifying so as to graph but whatever.