Essay

Standard Operating Procedure: Documenting FOIL Expansion for Area Estimation

As a senior facilities coordinator, you are drafting an onboarding guide for new office planning assistants. One of the examples in the manual requires explaining how to calculate the total area of a modular office space with dimensions (x7)(x - 7) feet and (x+5)(x + 5) feet.

Write a short training guide that explains step-by-step how to expand the area expression (x7)(x+5)(x - 7)(x + 5) using the FOIL method. Your guide must clearly address the following elements:

  1. State what each letter of the FOIL acronym stands for.
  2. Detail each of the four individual multiplication steps (First, Outer, Inner, and Last) by writing out both the terms being multiplied and their resulting product.
  3. Write the combined expression containing all four intermediate products before any terms are simplified.
  4. Identify the 'like terms' in this combined expression and show how they are combined.
  5. State the final simplified quadratic expression representing the area.

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Updated 2026-06-18

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