We are given a number (it can be both a positive or a negative number) and we are told that if we subtract 7 times this number from 3 and then multiply the result by -8 we are going to get 88. What is this mysterious number?
This situation can be translated to

How do we then solve for x, the mysterious number?
Let us divide both sides of the equation by -8, this gives



And now let us add 7x to both sides

and then add 10 to both sides to get

and finally, dividing both sides by 7 gives

which is our answer!