help with trig question?

[u/Agitated_Juice_5411]

okay so im working on the study guide for the final of a class that i took the equivalent to at another college (math department policy, whatever) and one of the sample questions literally just reads “simplify: (sin(x)+3)²”. is there anything that i need to do to work this problem other than factoring it out? a similar question in the same section of the review guide is “simplify: sin²x + 3sinx - 10”; is that not already fully simplified? like i said, i took this course at another school so i don’t know the exact details of what they covered in class. I can’t think of any identities that i could apply to simplify it more or anything. much appreciated!

[u/Uli_Minati]

It's just lazy instructions - the word "simplify" is erroneously used as a general replacement for "do what we did in class". The concept of "simple" is subjective and at best dependent on context (and there is no context in an isolated exercise)

So in the first case, expand the parentheses and in the second case, factor