staypuff

Cool. Muchas gracias.

Oh, I see. "a" and "b" are proposed, and then, given this, x' = ax - bct and ct' = act - bx are then derived. Yes, no?

I'm trying to understand Einstein's "Simple Derivation of the Lorentz Transformations." Maybe I should be posting this in a basic math forum, but I thought I'd ask it here. He gives us the two formulas (x' - ct') = Y(x - ct) and (x' + ct') = Z(x + ct). And then says when we add and subtract these two equations we get: a = (Y + Z)/2 and b = (Y - Z)/2 I don't get how he gets these. Perhaps I need to go back to high school and equation addition. Any help would be greatly appreciated!