Making larger
expressions easier to deal with
Suppose we had the fairly large
expression
3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 1 (We'll call this particular expression
"Our Expression", version 1)
In a moment we're going to see
how our expression can do some work for us in the real world. However, before
we do that, we can use what we've learned in section 3.16 to shorten the
expression, and make it easier to deal with.
First, lets evaluate some
smaller parts of the large expression, so that we can replace those parts of
the expression.
The expression is:
3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 1
However,
we know that 3 + 4 evaluates to 7
so we can rewrite
3 + 4 + 5
+ 6 + 1 (our expression, version 1)
as
7 + 5 + 6 + 1 (our
expression, version 2)
In version 2 of our expression, we've replaced
3 + 4 with 7.
Similarly, 5 + 6 evaluates to 11, so we can continue by
writing
7 + 11 + 1 (our expression, version 3) (Why can we do this?)
Now,
11 + 1 evaluates to 12, so we can rewrite the above expression as
7 +
12 (our expression, version 4) (Why can we do this?)
and 7 + 12
evaluates to 19 so we can rewrite the above expression as
19 (our
expression, version 5) (Why can we do this?)
This means that any time
we come across version 1 of our expression, 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 1, we can replace
it with version 5 of our expression, 19. We have found a mathematical short
cut.
Here's the whole process written out
3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 1
(our expression, version 1)
7 + 5 + 6 + 1 (our expression, version 2)
7
+ 11 + 1 (our expression, version 3)
7 + 12 (our expression, version 4)
19
(our expression, version 5)
Now that we have established this, we
don't have to work it out every time. If we see 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 1, we can just
replace it with 19, because we know that 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 1 evaluates to 19 . We
can also go one step further and say "We have now shown that it is TRUE
that 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 1 is equal to 19". Written symbolically, we can say
It
is TRUE that 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 1 = 19