--- title: The unknown number: equations as stories — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «The unknown number: equations as stories», a lesson of the lessons course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: An equation is a story with a missing number. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/lessons/138-equations-as-stories/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Lessons](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/lessons/) / The unknown number: equations as stories # The unknown number: equations as stories Lesson 138 of the lessons course of Mova's primary school: 4 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/lessons/138-equations-as-stories/0/) — An equation is a story with a missing number. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/lessons/138-equations-as-stories/2/) — Undo the steps from the end: take away the 5 to get 21, then divide by 3 to get 7. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/lessons/138-equations-as-stories/3/) — Check: 7 × 3 + 5 = 26. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/lessons/138-equations-as-stories/4/) — On a balance, 3 equal bags and a 5 kg weight against 26 kg mean the bags weigh 21 kg, so one bag weighs 7 kg. - ← previous: [Brackets in a story: first the group, then the groups](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/lessons/137-brackets-as-stories/) - next →: [Cuts and pieces, posts and gaps](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/lessons/139-cuts-and-gaps/) - ↑ back to [Lessons](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/lessons/)