Algebra HW help

Question

When would the substitution method be more efficient then the addition method when solving a system of linear equations?

Answer 1

That is a hard question to answer, because it really depends on what arithmetic is more comfortable for you.

Certainly if one of the equations has a coefficient of one, substitution is direct...but the arithmetic may be messier. No matter what if the coefficients are messy, no method is efficient...and resort to determinants and/or matrices may be most direct.

If you have resort to either a spreadsheet or a computer, matrix inversion is immediate!