When doing simplifying Algebraic expressions, is there a certain order that you need to express the terms in?

Question

i.e. I come up with the same answer but one person has 3x^2-xy-6x+5y and another has -6x+-1xy+3x^2=5. Which one is rt? Which order?

Answer 1

Mathematically any order will do but the standard convention is that terms with the highest degree come first.  If you have two terms that both have the highest degree like x^2 and y^2 then you place one term first and the other last.  (doesn't matter which one) Then you place the other terms in descending order so the degree of each term is decreasing.  For terms with more that one variable like "xy" you just go in descending order of the degree of the same variable you started with (so if you started with x^2 then you would go in order of the degree of the x variable)