Unit 2: Equations
What is the Difference Between Addition and Multiplication?
No matter how crazy the problems get, remember this:
You can multiply and divide anything that you like,
but you can only add or subtract like terms.
You can multiply and divide anything that you like,
but you can only add or subtract like terms.
Addition and Subtraction are quite basic -- if you have 5 elephants and 3 buckets of food, you can't say that you have 8 "elephantfoods". Nor can you subtract them. You can only add elephants to elephants and buckets to buckets. You can only add and subtract like terms.
Multiplication and Division are much more useful -- if you say that your 5 elephants each need 3 buckets of food, you can multiply them to say that you need 15 buckets of food for your 5 elephants. You can also divide food among the elephants. You can multiply and divide anything you like.
Multiplication and Division are much more useful -- if you say that your 5 elephants each need 3 buckets of food, you can multiply them to say that you need 15 buckets of food for your 5 elephants. You can also divide food among the elephants. You can multiply and divide anything you like.