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The roots of the quadratic function y = 1 / 2 x 2 − 3x + 5 / 2 are the places where the graph intersects the x-axis, the values x = 1 and x = 5. They can be found via the quadratic formula. In elementary algebra, the quadratic formula is a closed-form expression describing the solutions of a quadratic equation.
Figure 1. Plots of quadratic function y = ax 2 + bx + c, varying each coefficient separately while the other coefficients are fixed (at values a = 1, b = 0, c = 0). A quadratic equation whose coefficients are real numbers can have either zero, one, or two distinct real-valued solutions, also called roots.
If a quadratic function is equated with zero, then the result is a quadratic equation. The solutions of a quadratic equation are the zeros (or roots) of the corresponding quadratic function, of which there can be two, one, or zero. The solutions are described by the quadratic formula. A quadratic polynomial or quadratic function can involve ...
The roots , of the quadratic polynomial () = + + satisfy + =, =. The first of these equations can be used to find the minimum (or maximum) of P ; see Quadratic equation § Vieta's formulas .
Unlike methods involving factoring the equation, which is reliable only if the roots are rational, completing the square will find the roots of a quadratic equation even when those roots are irrational or complex. For example, consider the equation + =
However, most root-finding algorithms do not guarantee that they will find all roots of a function, and if such an algorithm does not find any root, that does not necessarily mean that no root exists. Most numerical root-finding methods are iterative methods, producing a sequence of numbers that ideally converges towards a root as a limit.
Newton's method is a powerful technique—in general the convergence is quadratic: as the method converges on the root, the difference between the root and the approximation is squared (the number of accurate digits roughly doubles) at each step. However, there are some difficulties with the method.
The quadratic equation on a number can be solved using the well-known quadratic formula, which can be derived by completing the square. That formula always gives the roots of the quadratic equation, but the solutions are expressed in a form that often involves a quadratic irrational number, which is an algebraic fraction that can be evaluated ...