Chapter 2

Evaluating Arithmetic Expressions

IN THIS CHAPTER

Check Understanding equations, expressions, and evaluation

Check Doing the Big Four operations in the right order

Check Working with expressions that contain exponents

Check Evaluating expressions with parentheses

In this chapter, I introduce you to what I call the Three E’s of math: equations, expressions, and evaluation.

You probably already know that an equation is a mathematical statement that has an equal sign math — for example, math. An expression is a string of mathematical symbols that you can place on one side of an equation — for example, math. And evaluation is finding out the value of an expression as a number — for example, finding out that the expression is equal to the number 2.

Throughout the rest of the chapter, I show you how to turn expressions ...

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