Hmm, I solved this one Gayathri's way and was wondering what I did wrong.
After looking at another problem in the forum, I realized that whenever there is a quadratic equation, it is better to keep it in that form in DS, even though it might simplify into a linear equation.
As for this question (following Gayathri's solution):
(x-y)(x+y) = 4(x-y)
Here, the first instinct is to jump to x+y=4, However, lets substitute y=1:
(x-1)(x+1)=4(x-1)
x^2-4x+3=0
(x-1)(x-3)=0
Hence, there are 2 solutions x+y=2 & x+y=4
So, we need to look at A & B to solve the problem:
A) x not equal to y
- from above we can then have one solution x+y=4;
B) x>2 , y<2
- again from above x+y=4 is the only solution
-fm
PS: Lesson learnt: The reason a quadratic eqn that can be simplified to a linear equation, can still have 2 possible solutions instead of 1, is because we might be cancelling a term on both sides of "=" under the assumption "NOT EQUAL to 0"
(x-1)(x-3)=y(x-1)
you can cancel (x-1) only if you know x is not equal to 1!!!