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EQUATIONS
Everybody who has ever attended a High School knows what an equation is. Don't think, however, that because you learn about equations in high school, that a high school education is necessary before you can understand equations.      Because they are part of the Radio-Trician's language, we must know, not only what they are but how to use them. All of this can be explained in a few words.
     Going back to the dealer who gave the factory details about his business--he may have said something about the profit he was able to make on each sale. Suppose he said something like this: "I have cut my operating costs, I have my business well in hand, my profit is actually one-fourth of my sales."
     So for each dollar he takes in, 25 cents is profit and goes right into his pocket. This is a simple statement and easy to grasp, but suppose the manufacturer is interested in knowing the exact profit of the dealer for each year he was in business.
     He has this statement to begin with--"profit is one-quarter sales." But he is a busy man--he doesn't want to write any unnecessary words. So he can reduce the statement--instead of writing out the words for profit and sales, he can take just the first letter of each as symbols. Then the statement would be--p is 1/4 s. But "is" means "equals." He knows the symbol for the word "equals," which is "=." Now he writes the statement in this form-- p=l/4s

or p = s/4

     This is the original statement reduced to its shortest possible form. And this is an equation (the word equation means-- "has been made equal").
     Using this equation, the manufacturer can easily calculate the profit on a sale of any size. If it is known that the total sales the first year our dealer was in business amounted to 8000 dollars, can we find his profit? Easily enough. Take the original statement in equation form and instead of "s" put in 8000. Ther) it will appear in this form p = 8000/4. Then all we have to do is divide 8000 by 4 which is 2000. So p or profit is 2000 dollars.
     We can do the same thing for every week the dealer was in business, knowing the amount of money he took in from sales

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Transcriber  Richard Lancaster