Since the negative sign is outside of the parenthesis, the negative is applied after the 3x has been squared. So the result is -9x^2, not +9x^2. If the negative was inside the parenthesis, then the negative would be squared and the answer would be positive.
Thank you! I’m pretty sure I just overlooked order of operations. I’m so used to distributing the negative sign, but exponents and parenthesis come before multiplication.
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