An expression is any combination of symbols that can be evaluated to a number (or perhaps to some other data type). An equation has an equal sign, and an expression on both sides of the equal sign - it is a claim that the two expressions are equal.
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Both have a value
An equation has the 'equals' sign ( = ) in it. An expression hasn't.
An equation consists of two expressions, one on either side of an equality symbol.
The differences of the expressions (a - b) and (b - a) are related by the fact that (b - a) is the negative of (a - b). This means that if (a - b) is positive, then (b - a) will be negative, and vice versa. Specifically, we can express this relationship mathematically as (b - a = -(a - b)). Thus, the two expressions have equal magnitude but opposite signs.
equations have an = sign, inequalities do not