How To Miss A Solution To An Equation

Reminder when solving Equations

Avoiding a common pitfall (banana skin is the modern expression)

Care in Solving Equations:

A common mistake when solving equations:

Consider this:

Solve equation below:

x-squared = x

It may be tempting to divide both sides of the equation by x

to achieve this:

x = 1

So we have only found one solution but there are two solutions to x-squared = x

The better method is to subtract x from both sides to get:

x-squared - x = 0

Then factorize

x(x-1) = 0

Two solutions are x = 0 and x = 1

The moral of this article is:

Never divide an equation by a variable quantity if you want to preserve ALL solutions to a problem. lt;/p>