Equations can be solved in many ways. In this lesson, we focused on equations with a specific structure, and two specific ways to solve them. 

Suppose we are trying to solve the equation . Two useful approaches are:

• Divide each side by .
• Apply the distributive property.

In order to decide which approach is better, we can look at the numbers and think about which would be easier to compute. We notice that  will be hard, because 27 isn't divisible by 5.  So, distributing the is not the best method. But gives us , and 16 is divisible by 4. So, dividing each side by  is a good choice.

Sometimes the calculations are simpler if we first use the distributive property. Let's look at the equation . If we first divide each side by 100, we get  or 0.21 on the right side of the equation. But if we use the distributive property first, we get an equation that only contains whole numbers.