What is the degree of this monomial 17x^5y^2

The degree of this monomial, which is a form of a polynomial, has a degree of 7.

Explanation: For two variables, we take the sum of the powers and this becomes the highest power of our polynomial, which is defined as the degree of a polynomial.
Now, it's relatively easy for polynomials where we are taking one variable, but two variables is a little bit harder.

Notice how any variable to the power of 0 will give us 1, and anything multiplied by 0 will give us 0.

We can rewrite this in many different ways:


Since every other factor cancels out to be 0, then we say that they are non-existent, because even, if in hindsight they do exist, they don't affect our final polynomial.

So, we can say that the degree of this polynomial, highest power, is 7.

The operation is suck a c@ck? !