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.
Inverse. The inverse of something is that thing turned inside out or upside down. The inverse of an operation undoes the operation: division undoes multiplication. A number's additive inverse is another number that you can add to the original number to get the additive identity. For example, the additive inverse of 67 is -67, because 67 + -67 = 0, the additive identity.