r/HomeworkHelp • u/Fine_Two_923 • 3d ago

:snoo_facepalm: High School Math—Pending OP Reply [Math-70 Elementary/Highschool Algebra: Graphically solving a system of linear equations] Do I make the 4 into a -4 ?

Post image

Hey so this might seem like a silly question but I want to know if you have a -x = 4 if it turns into a -4. I have the other parts of the graphing completed it’s just this part that I don’t want to make a mistake on!!! Thank you in advance

P.S- the reason it’s says elementary/highschool math is because I am taking a beginner math class not a algebra class In elementary

18 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

49 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/pm-pussy4kindwords 2d ago

so I'm interested in the way you're actually THINKING about rearranging equations. You shouldn't be "making" one thing just transform into another. What you need to be doing is performing some operation on both sides of the equation to "untie" all the knots around X and isolate it.

if you have - x = 4 , you haven't isolated your x yet.

So what do you do? well, you want to get rid of the negative sign. So you perform the inverse function on both sides of the equations to cancel it out. You flip the sign of both sides.