Expressions and Statements

The equations and formulas used in the solution of story problems are called assignment statements in programs. The distinction between equations and assignment statements is quite important. Formally, in algebra, an equation is a fact: both sides are equal. An assigment statement looks like an equation, but it is a set of commands to the computer telling it how to process the data. In an assignment statement, the unknown (and only the unknown) must be on the left hand side of the assignment symbol which in Anglish (and in many programming languages) is the equal sign (=). The part of the assignment statement on the right hand side of the equal sign is called an expression. The expression specifies the arithmetic computations required to calculate the unknown from the given values. An example from a debugging.