Factoring by Grouping
Consider the polynomial Observe that the terms of the polynomial have no common factor other than 1. Notice, however, that the first two terms have a as common factor, while the last two terms have b as common factor. In cases like this, a possible technique that you can do is factoring by grouping.
By the associative property of addition, you can rewrite the given polynomial as
By factoring the resulting polynomial in each group, you will get the following.
