To balance redox reactions, assign oxidation numbers to the reactants and products to determine how many moles of each species are needed to conserve mass and charge. First, separate the equation into two half-reactions, the oxidation portion and the reduction portion. This is called the half-reaction method of balancing redox reactions or the ion-electron method. Each half-reaction is balanced separately and then the equations are added together to give a balanced overall reaction. We want the net charge and number of ions to be equal on both sides of the final balanced equation.

For this example, let's consider a redox reaction between KMnO4and HI in an acidic solution:

MnO4- + I- → I2 + Mn2+

from this link: http://chemistry.about.com/od/generalchemistry/ss/redoxbal.htm

http://www.science.uwaterloo.ca/~cchieh/cact/c123/balance.html