# 9.5.2 Doing and Undoing

The next activity gives you some practice with doing and undoing. You will find these techniques helpful for rearranging formulas later. Part (c) involves two stages.

## Activity: Doing and Undoing

Try to work out what number I was thinking of in the following problems. You may find it helpful to use some doing-undoing diagrams.

(a) Think of a number, subtract 3, and the answer is 2.

So, the number I thought of was 5.

Remember, you can check your answer by using it in the calculation: .

(b) Think of a number, multiply by 5, and the answer is 35.

So, the number I thought of was 7. (Check: ).

(c) Think of a number, add 4, double it, and the answer is 14.

So, working from the right, and .

If you like, you can write the output from each box on the arrow as shown above.

So, the number I thought of was 3. (Check: , then ).

When you have to deal with more than one operation, just take each step in turn. Write down the doing diagram and draw the undoing one underneath, working backward to undo each operation.

## To summarize, the following operations undo each other:

• Multiplication and division.

• Squaring and taking the positive square root.

## Activity: A Multistep Problem

Think of a number. Add 5. Multiply by 3. Subtract 4.

If the answer is 17, can you work out what number I was thinking of?

Here there are several steps, so to find the number, it will be necessary to undo each of these steps in turn, starting with the last step. Draw the doing diagram and then the undoing one beneath it.

The diagram below shows the steps taken in this case and then how to undo each one.

So, if the answer is 17, undoing the steps by working from right to left gives: