Chapter 6 Systems of Linear/Nonlinear Equations

Up until now, when we concerned ourselves with solving different types of equations there was only one equation to solve at a time. Given an equation , we could check our solutions geometrically by finding where the graphs of and intersect. The -coordinates of these intersection points correspond to the solutions to the equation , and the -coordinates were largely ignored. If we modify the problem and ask for the intersection points of the graphs of and , where both the solution to and are of interest, we have what is known as a system of equations, written as

The `curly bracket’ notation means we are to find all pairs of points which satisfy both equations.