What is x meant to represent?

Question

Example: x² how can you square x, when x has no supposed value? Better yet, E.g. x^2+7x-4=0 What is x meant to mean?

Answer 1

The example equation you have given is in a form called the Quadratic Equation. The Quadratic Equation is an equation form in algebra that once we are able to simply to that given form: (a)*x^2 + (b)*x + c = 0, where a,b, and c are coefficients, we can solve it using the Quadratic Formula for the given unknown X. The Quadratic formula is represented as x = (-b ± sqrt(b^2 - 4*a*c))/(2*a). If you use the Quadratic Formula on your example the results should be a = 1, b = 7, c = -4, and x = (-7 ± sqrt(65))/2. With this knowledge you can solve for x^2.