Equality or Identity?
• The equal sign can be used in two ways—to show equality or to show identity.
• Equalities are only true for certain values.
• Solve an equation by getting the variable by itself.
• What you do to one side of an equation you must do to the other side too.
• Identities are true for all values.
• Prove a statement is an identity by showing that the two sides are the same.

A mathematical sentence containing equality is known as an

identity if it is always true.

This example is not an identity because the very first value

demonstrated presents a false statement.

This statement is an identity. It is always true.

Solving an equation is the process of determining the value(s)

of x for which the statement is true.

The process involves moving the elements in the equation

away from x to find out what x equals. The fantasy is to
complete the sentence: x = ___.

To minimize error, always check your answer(s). This

involves substituting each value into the equation for x and
doing the arithmetic in order to verify that the equation is a
true statement.

This example is more complicated.

Testing with two random values produces true statements in

both cases.

Expanding the statement using the distributive property

produces a statement with two identical expressions linked.
This statement will always be true no matter what value is
used for x. Therefore, this is an identity.

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