The goal of this article is to discuss the Simple Equations Method (SEsM) for obtaining exact solutions of nonlinear partial differential equations and to show that several well-known methods for obtaining exact solutions of such equations are connected to SEsM. In more detail, we show that the Hirota method is connected to a particular case of SEsM for a specific form of the function from Step 2 of SEsM and for simple equations of the kinds of differential equations for exponential functions. We illustrate this particular case of SEsM by obtaining the three- soliton solution of the Korteweg-de Vries equation, two-soliton solution of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation, and the soliton solution of the Ishimori equation for the spin dynamics of ferromagnetic materials. Then we show that a particular case of SEsM can be used in order to reproduce the methodology of the inverse scattering transform method for the case of the Burgers equation and Korteweg-de Vries equation. This particular case is connected to use of a specific case of Step 2 of SEsM. This step is connected to: (i) representation of the solution of the solved nonlinear partial differential equation as expansion as power series containing powers of a "small" parameter ϵ; (ii) solving the differential equations arising from this representation by means of Fourier series, and (iii) transition from the obtained solution for small values of ϵ to solution for arbitrary finite values of ϵ. Finally, we show that the much-used homogeneous balance method, extended homogeneous balance method, auxiliary equation method, Jacobi elliptic function expansion method, F-expansion method, modified simple equation method, trial function method and first integral method are connected to particular cases of SEsM.
Keywords: Hirota method; Jacobi elliptic function expansion method; auxiliary equation method; exact solutions; extended homogeneous balance method; f-expansion method; first integral method; homogeneous balance method; inverse scattering transform method; modified simple equation method; nonlinear partial differential equations; simple equations method (sesm); trial function method.