Answer: 5x-3
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Explanation:
Think of x as a placeholder for a number. For me, I tend to think of it as a box. It's handy that the letter x is part of box, to help make that connection better. We have some box and inside the box goes a number.
If we multiply 5 by whatever is in the box, we can write it like [tex]5*\square[/tex]
Then let's say we fill that box with the value 7. We would then have [tex]5*\boxed{7}[/tex]
If we put 3 in the box instead we'll have [tex]5*\boxed{3}[/tex] and so on
Unfortunately the box symbol isn't something we could easily write on a keyboard, so we go with x instead to make life simpler.
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So far we've shown that "5 times a number" turns into 5*x or just 5x.
From here we subtract off 3 to get 5x-3 as the final answer. Whatever the result of 5x is, we subtract off 3.
The answer would not be 3-5x since this means "subtract 5x from 3". The order of subtraction matters. In general, A-B is not the same as B-A.
