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If four friends split a restaurant bill evenly, or if you buy five notebooks for dd dollars each, you are already using algebra in real life.
The trick is knowing which English clue words tell you to multiply and which tell you to divide.

Multiplying Without the Times Sign

In math, words like product, times, multiplied by, twice, and triple all signal multiplication.
Each number or variable being multiplied is called a factor, and a number placed directly in front of a variable is called a coefficient.
In algebra, we avoid the multiplication symbol Γ—\times because it looks too much like the variable xx. Instead, we place numbers right next to variables, writing 5Γ—n5 \times n simply as 5n5n.
For example, if you see the phrase "the product of 8 and a number kk," you write it as 8k8k.
Always place the numerical coefficient first: write 8k8k, never k8k8.
What happens when a phrase tells us to share or split a quantity into equal groups?

Dividing with Fraction Bars

Words like quotient, divided by, split equally, and ratio all tell you to divide.
A quotient is the result of dividing one quantity by another.