From the course: Test Prep: GRE

Unlock the full course today

Join today to access over 24,200 courses taught by industry experts.

Linear equations

Linear equations

From the course: Test Prep: GRE

Start my 1-month free trial Buy for my team

Linear equations

“

- [Voiceover] So, linear equations are basically just equations without exponents. That's kind of a simple definition. So, in other words, let's say I have x plus two equals four. That's a linear equation, I'm not raising x to any kind of power. The thing to know about linear equations at the most basic level is you usually want to solve for the variable a lot of times. And then you can do that by isolating it. The way that we isolate it is we get the variable on one side of the equation and all the numbers on the other side. So, to do that, we want to kind of do the same thing to both sides. If I subtracted two from both sides in this case, then the left side of the equation would just be x and the right side would now be two. This applies when we're multiplying as well. Let's start with subtraction, actually. Let's say I had x minus two equals four. Notice that I'm kind of doing the opposite of the operation, like if I'm subtracting two, now I'm going to add two to get rid of that…

Contents