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Multiplying the equation by a 2 and dividing by b 3 gives: + =. Substituting y = ax/b gives: + = which could now be solved by looking up the n 3 + n 2 table to find the value closest to the right-hand side. The Babylonians accomplished this without algebraic notation, showing a remarkable depth of understanding.
Babylonian clay tablet YBC 7289 with annotations. The diagonal displays an approximation of the square root of 2 in four sexagesimal figures, 1 24 51 10, which is good to about six decimal digits. 1 + 24/60 + 51/60 2 + 10/60 3 = 1.41421296... The tablet also gives an example where one side of the square is 30, and the resulting diagonal is 42 ...
For example, let a denote a multiplicative generator of the group of units of F 4, the Galois field of order four (thus a and a + 1 are roots of x 2 + x + 1 over F 4. Because ( a + 1) 2 = a , a + 1 is the unique solution of the quadratic equation x 2 + a = 0 .
The ratio p/q takes its greatest value, 12/5=2.4, in Row 1 of the table, and is therefore always less than +, a condition which guarantees that p 2 − q 2 is the long leg and 2pq is the short leg of the triangle and which, in modern terms, implies that the angle opposite the leg of length p 2 − q 2 is less than 45°.
Equally important as the use or lack of symbolism in algebra was the degree of the equations that were addressed. Quadratic equations played an important role in early algebra; and throughout most of history, until the early modern period, all quadratic equations were classified as belonging to one of three categories.
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 ...
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It is also used for graphing quadratic functions, deriving the quadratic formula, and more generally in computations involving quadratic polynomials, for example in calculus evaluating Gaussian integrals with a linear term in the exponent, [2] and finding Laplace transforms. [3] [4]