Other words/expressions for “mathematical equation”

Question

Do you know any expressions that have the same meaning as mathematical equation? I search through list of synonym and I cannot find any replacement.

Answer 1

Talking about A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking said

Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales. I therefore resolved not to have any equations at all. In the end, however, I did put in one equation, Einstein's famous equation, E = mc². I hope that this will not scare off half of my potential readers.

In cases like this, formula probably has a similar meaning to equation, though for mathematicians and physicists there is a distinction.

Answer 2

Many specific equations have their own names. I will not list them here but Wikipedia has a good start. If your equation is important it will probably be best to refer to its name.

Otherwise, you can use some of the following phrases (provided links are where I found the terms):

• statement
• proposition
• expression
• function

Mathematical terms tend to be very specific and narrow in their definition. There is absolutely nothing wrong with using the term "equation" if that is what you are referring to. Trying to shoehorn a different word in is more likely to cause confusion and isn't likely to win you many brownie points.

Answer 3

I don't have an expression, but I do have a poem (specifically a limerick).

This reads as:

A Dozen, a Gross and a Score,
Plus three times the square root of four,
Divided by seven,
Plus five times eleven,
Equals nine squared and not a bit more.

I apologize for not being a real answer, I would however say that mathematical equation could be redundant. Equation alone would probably do in a lot of cases.

Answer 4

In the programming world people often use the term expression although this page distinguishes the two:

http://www.mathnstuff.com/math/algebra/aequex.htm

There would also be comparison, equivalence, equality or even par depending on the context as well as the paraphrases "formula of equality" (chemistry) and "identity relation".