A linear equation is an algebraic equation in which each term is either a constant or the product of a constant and (the first power of) a single variable.
Linear equations can have one or more variables. Linear equations occur with great regularity in applied mathematics. While they arise quite naturally when modeling many phenomena, they are particularly useful since many non-linear equations may be reduced to linear equations by assuming that quantities of interest vary to only a small extent from some "background" state.
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