The word for the punctuation mark, on the other hand, comes from Îºá¿¶Î»Î¿Î½ (or kÅlon), which means âlimbâ or âclauseâ â and it is used because one of the main functions of the colon is to separate two clauses, where the second clause explains or follows from the first.
The goal in solving an equation is to get the variable by itself on one side of the equation and a number on the other side of the equation. To isolate the variable, we must reverse the operations acting on the variable. We do this by performing the inverse of each operation on both sides of the equation.
Properties of equalities. Two equations that have the same solution are called equivalent equations e.g. 5 +3 = 2 + 6. And this as we learned in a previous section is shown by the equality sign =. An inverse operation are two operations that undo each other e.g. addition and subtraction or multiplication and division. You can perform the same inverse operation on each side of an equivalent equation without changing the equality.