Algebra; an interesting branch of mathematics

Mathematics is like a game, understanding the concept to play and then practice it to become best in it. algebra problems are not that difficult.

Algebra mainly consists of variables. If we talk in simple words then we will see that algebra is simply the art of replacing variables in place of numbers. In solving algebra problems simplifying algebraic terms is important. Simplifying fractions here refers to breaking the large expressions into smaller ones so that it becomes easy to solve. Let’s have a look on following expression : 7xy5 + 6 xy5 – 2 xy5 = 15 xy5.

This expression on the first look may seem very difficult to solve, so just look carefully we can simply solve it by applying the concept of like terms.

Like terms are the one which has same variables raised to same power. In the above example we see that xy5 is the same term in whole expression so we can shuffle the terms and get the answer. An algebraic expression is an expresssion having one or more variables . It can also contain symbols of addition, subtraction, multiplication or division. For example:

3 + 2x

here, x is the variable

+ is the mathematical operator, 2 is the coefficient of x

Algebraic expressions are of many types and they are classified in like this. Expressions that contain only one term are called monomials. Expressions that contain only two terms are called binomials. Expressions that contain only three terms are called trinomials.

Another important concept in the algebraic expressions is Algebraic fractions. Fractions, as we all know, are the numbers in the form of a/b where a is the numerator and b is the denominator. So, Algebraic fractions are those terms which have algebraic expression in both numerator and denominator. For performing multipication of these Algebraic expressions we simply multiply the numerators by numerators and denominators by denominators a/b*c/d=ac/bd. And they can be simplified if there is a common factor in numerator and denominator.

For Addition and subtraction of algebraic expressions with fractions, we have a very simple rule that is before performing any addition or subtraction we have to ensure that they have the same denominator. So if the denominators are the same like in this example a/c + b/c= a+b/c, we can simply add the numerators. If there are different denominators then we can simply take the LCM of denominator terms, and multiply the numerator with the quotient of the LCM divided by the denominator. This is almost the same as addition of fractions.