In general, positive experiences (like receiving lots of "likes" on social media) cause our expectation about how rewarding something will be to increase, and negative experiences (like receiving mean comments) cause our expectation about how rewarding something will be to decrease. However, this general description of the learning process does not help us make specific predictions about how much an experience will cause us to change our expectations. For example, imagine you post nine pictures that receive many "likes" and one picture that receives a nasty comment. How much will one nasty comment change your estimate of how rewarding it is to post a picture? How much less likely will you be to post similar pictures in the future? Without a mathematical equation to describe the learning process, we cannot answer these questions.
Additionally, researchers can write equations with different sections, where each section represents a different process involved in thinking or decision-making. Then, we can see what happens when we change each part of the equation to understand how different thought processes contribute to learning.

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