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To complete the square, form a squared binomial on the left-hand side of a quadratic equation, from which the solution can be found by taking the square root of both sides. The standard way to derive the quadratic formula is to apply the method of completing the square to the generic quadratic equation a x 2 + b x + c = 0 {\displaystyle ...
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.
The square root of a univariate quadratic function gives rise to one of the four conic sections, almost always either to an ellipse or to a hyperbola. If a > 0 , {\displaystyle a>0,} then the equation y = ± a x 2 + b x + c {\displaystyle y=\pm {\sqrt {ax^{2}+bx+c}}} describes a hyperbola, as can be seen by squaring both sides.
A method analogous to piece-wise linear approximation but using only arithmetic instead of algebraic equations, uses the multiplication tables in reverse: the square root of a number between 1 and 100 is between 1 and 10, so if we know 25 is a perfect square (5 × 5), and 36 is a perfect square (6 × 6), then the square root of a number greater than or equal to 25 but less than 36, begins with ...
It follows by Vieta's formulas that x and y must be roots of the quadratic equation + = ; its = = > (≠ 0, otherwise c would be the square of a), hence x and y must be + and . Thus x and y are rational if and only if d = a 2 − c {\displaystyle d={\sqrt {a^{2}-c}}~} is a rational number.
The square root of a positive integer is the product of the roots of its prime factors, because the square root of a product is the product of the square roots of the factors. Since p 2 k = p k , {\textstyle {\sqrt {p^{2k}}}=p^{k},} only roots of those primes having an odd power in the factorization are necessary.
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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 + =