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what is equation
An equation is a formula of the form A = B, where A and B are expressions containing one or several variables called unknowns, and "=" denotes the equality binary relation. Although written in the form of proposition, an equation is not a statement, but a problem consisting in finding the values, called solutions, that, when substituted to the unknowns, yields equal values of expressions A and B. For example, 2 is the unique solution of the equation x + 2 = 4, in which the unknown is x. An equality may not be confused with identities which are presented with the same notation but have a different semantic: for example 2 + 2 = 4 and x + y = y + x are identities (which implies they are necessarily true) in arithmetic, and do not constitute any values-finding problem, even if include variables.


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