Can you tell me about parenthesis?

They group stuff together so you know to perform an operation on more than just 1 thing.

EXAMPLES:

-x^2 means you just square the x and the answer will have a negative sign in front

(-x)^2 means you square not just x, but (-x), which will give you a positive number.

5 + 2^2 = 5 + 4 = 9

(5 + 2)^2 = 7^2 = 49