Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
Layers of Pascal's pyramid derived from coefficients in an upside-down ternary plot of the terms in the expansions of the powers of a trinomial – the number of terms is clearly a triangular number. In mathematics, a trinomial expansion is the expansion of a power of a sum of three terms into monomials. The expansion is given by
where x is a variable we are interested in solving for, we can use cross-multiplication to determine that x = b c d . {\displaystyle x={\frac {bc}{d}}.} For example, suppose we want to know how far a car will travel in 7 hours, if we know that its speed is constant and that it already travelled 90 miles in the last 3 hours.
For instance, the polynomial x 2 + 3x + 2 is an example of this type of trinomial with n = 1. The solution a 1 = −2 and a 2 = −1 of the above system gives the trinomial factorization: x 2 + 3x + 2 = (x + a 1)(x + a 2) = (x + 2)(x + 1). The same result can be provided by Ruffini's rule, but with a more complex and time-consuming process.
In algebra, the partial fraction decomposition or partial fraction expansion of a rational fraction (that is, a fraction such that the numerator and the denominator are both polynomials) is an operation that consists of expressing the fraction as a sum of a polynomial (possibly zero) and one or several fractions with a simpler denominator.
Modern algorithms and computers can quickly factor univariate polynomials of degree more than 1000 having coefficients with thousands of digits. [3] For this purpose, even for factoring over the rational numbers and number fields, a fundamental step is a factorization of a polynomial over a finite field.
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.
In mathematics, a rational function is any function that can be defined by a rational fraction, which is an algebraic fraction such that both the numerator and the denominator are polynomials. The coefficients of the polynomials need not be rational numbers ; they may be taken in any field K .