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Graph of a polynomial function of degree 4, with its 4 roots and 3 critical points. + + + + = where a ≠ 0. The quartic is the highest order polynomial equation that can be solved by radicals in the general case (i.e., one in which the coefficients can take any value).
Graph of a polynomial of degree 4, with 3 critical points and four real roots (crossings of the x axis) (and thus no complex roots). If one or the other of the local minima were above the x axis, or if the local maximum were below it, or if there were no local maximum and one minimum below the x axis, there would only be two real roots (and two complex roots).
For polynomials in two or more variables, the degree of a term is the sum of the exponents of the variables in the term; the degree (sometimes called the total degree) of the polynomial is again the maximum of the degrees of all terms in the polynomial. For example, the polynomial x 2 y 2 + 3x 3 + 4y has degree 4, the same degree as the term x ...
The graph of a polynomial function of degree 3. The x occurring in a polynomial is commonly called a variable or an indeterminate. When the polynomial is considered as an expression, x is a fixed symbol which does not have any value (its value is "indeterminate").
In calculus, Taylor's theorem gives an approximation of a -times differentiable function around a given point by a polynomial of degree , called the -th-order Taylor polynomial. For a smooth function , the Taylor polynomial is the truncation at the order k {\textstyle k} of the Taylor series of the function.
So, except for very low degrees, root finding of polynomials consists of finding approximations of the roots. By the fundamental theorem of algebra, a polynomial of degree n has exactly n real or complex roots counting multiplicities. It follows that the problem of root finding for polynomials may be split in three different subproblems;
For example, given a = f(x) = a 0 x 0 + a 1 x 1 + ··· and b = g(x) = b 0 x 0 + b 1 x 1 + ···, the product ab is a specific value of W(x) = f(x)g(x). One may easily find points along W(x) at small values of x, and interpolation based on those points will yield the terms of W(x) and the specific product ab. As fomulated in Karatsuba ...
Horner's method evaluates a polynomial using repeated bracketing: + + + + + = + (+ (+ (+ + (+)))). This method reduces the number of multiplications and additions to just Horner's method is so common that a computer instruction "multiply–accumulate operation" has been added to many computer processors, which allow doing the addition and multiplication operations in one combined step.