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By the fundamental theorem of algebra, if the monic polynomial equation x 2 + bx + c = 0 has complex coefficients, it must have two (not necessarily distinct) complex roots. Unfortunately, the discriminant b 2 − 4c is not as useful in this situation, because it may be a complex number. Still, a modified version of the general theorem can be ...
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.
A solution in radicals or algebraic solution is an expression of a solution of a polynomial equation that is algebraic, that is, relies only on addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, raising to integer powers, and extraction of n th roots (square roots, cube roots, etc.).
For example, the equation x + y = 2x – 1 is solved for the unknown x by the expression x = y + 1, because substituting y + 1 for x in the equation results in (y + 1) + y = 2(y + 1) – 1, a true statement. It is also possible to take the variable y to be the unknown, and then the equation is solved by y = x – 1.
In the second step, the distributive law is used to simplify each of the two terms. Note that this process involves a total of three applications of the distributive property. In contrast to the FOIL method, the method using distributivity can be applied easily to products with more terms such as trinomials and higher.
For example, taking the statement x + 1 = 0, if x is substituted with 1, this implies 1 + 1 = 2 = 0, which is false, which implies that if x + 1 = 0 then x cannot be 1. If x and y are integers, rationals, or real numbers, then xy = 0 implies x = 0 or y = 0. Consider abc = 0. Then, substituting a for x and bc for y, we learn a = 0 or bc = 0.
That is, h is the x-coordinate of the axis of symmetry (i.e. the axis of symmetry has equation x = h), and k is the minimum value (or maximum value, if a < 0) of the quadratic function. One way to see this is to note that the graph of the function f(x) = x 2 is a parabola whose vertex is at the origin
A similar problem, involving equating like terms rather than coefficients of like terms, arises if we wish to de-nest the nested radicals + to obtain an equivalent expression not involving a square root of an expression itself involving a square root, we can postulate the existence of rational parameters d, e such that