Essay

Field Audit Formula Verification

As a training supervisor at a regional electrical utility company, you are preparing onboarding materials for new field auditors. The company uses the load-capacity adjustment formula ${}3ab^2$ to calculate branch line safety factors, where aa represents the line-routing density coefficient and bb represents the transformer load variance factor. On a specific project, an auditor must evaluate this safety factor when the density coefficient aa is 23-\frac{2}{3} and the load variance bb is 12-\frac{1}{2}.

To ensure your trainees can correctly explain the mathematical mechanics behind their software calculators, write a training guide passage that details the exact steps and mathematical rules required to evaluate the expression ${}3ab^2$ for these specific inputs. Your response must clearly recall and state:

  1. The initial substitution step, demonstrating how to write the expression using parentheses for clarity.
  2. The specific order of operations rule that dictates whether the exponent or the multiplication must be simplified first.
  3. The algebraic rule for squaring a negative fraction.
  4. The process of multiplying the resulting fractions and dividing out common factors to obtain the final simplified value of 12-\frac{1}{2}.

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Updated 2026-06-17

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