what does it mean if a letter is next to a number in algebra e.g. 5a = 65

Question

recently my teacher has given me homework about algebra and some of the questions have a letter next to a number and the day we were working on algebra, i was sick off of school and i got really confused when she gave me the homework, PLEASE HELP!!! I . I

Answer 1

The number 5 is the coefficient on the variable a. All this means is that 5 "times" a equals 65. 

 

If the directions were to solve, were trying to find the number that when multiplied by 5 will give us 65. The way we do this algebraically is to undo the multiplication of a by 5, by dividing both sides of the equation by 5.

 

This gives us a = 13.

 

To check, we can see that 5*13=65.