which of the following must be true? (no restrictions of

i don't know if I am correct here, where did this Q come from? my order of operations may have been screwed up

my first answer was 4:

my reason: any number squared is positive. the values of x and y are irrelevant to the question. any combination of x and y will either be 1: positive or 2: negative. whatever the value, when it is squared it will be >0. then any positve number multiplied by negative 1 is negative.


then when i thought about it, we don't know if x and y are different numbers. if x and y are the same then 0^2 = 0. so II was out. also, because we don't know the values of x and y, y could =-x then we would have another situation where we are squaring zero. so my final answer is 5 - can not be determined.

please comment on my reasoning... i have been trying to practice with these sorts of problems as they are one of my weaknesses