Can you invert both sides of an equation

It only takes a minute to sign up. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. So your conclusion is really wrong. You can't just flip all willy-nilly. If what you said was true, then the resistance of electrical circuits in series and parallel connections would be the same!

That just isn't true. Now, you see. You must either change your math gods or listen to them more carefully. Sign up to join this community.

You lose information. This is important later. The quick way is to simply 'flip' both fractions a learned heuristic. However, this ignores implicit restrictions on the domain. Most likely not. Flipping as a heuristic is usually pretty safe. Last edited: Jan 11, Plato MHF Helper. Aug 22, 8, Sep 90 Canada. In fact, any number you can come up with has an additive inverse. No matter how large or small a number is, adding it and its inverse will equal 0 every time. If you've never worked with positive and negative numbers, you might want to review our lesson on negative numbers.

The main time you'll use the additive inverse in algebra is when you cancel out numbers in an expression. If you're not familiar with cancelling out, check out our lesson on simplifying expressions. When you cancel out a number, you're eliminating it from one side of an equation by performing an inverse action on that number on both sides of the equation.

In this expression, we're cancelling out -8 by adding its opposite: 8. Using the additive inverse works for cancelling out because a number added to its inverse always equals 0.

The second type of opposite number has to do with multiplication and division. It's called the multiplicative inverse , but it's more commonly called a reciprocal. Performing the same operation on both sides of an equation does not change the validity of the equation, or the value of the variable that satisfies it. When more than one operation acts on a variable in an algebraic equation, apply the reverse of the order of operations to reverse the operations.

Here is the order in which you should reverse operations: Reverse addition and subtraction by subtracting and adding outside parentheses. Reverse multiplication and division by dividing and multiplying outside parentheses.