Aconcepts a word at or near the begining of a sentence with a word at or near the end of a sentence

Nick has box brads. he uses 4 brads for the first project. nick let’s b represent the original number of brads and finds that for the second project, the number of brads he uses is 8 more than half the difference of b and 4. write an expression to represent the number of brads he uses for the second project.

How can you tell when x and y are not directly proportional?

Evaluate the expression for the given value of the variable. ∣-4b-8∣+∣-1-b^2 ∣+2b^3 ; b=-2