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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.). A well-known example is the quadratic formula
To solve this kind of equation, the technique is add, subtract, multiply, or divide both sides of the equation by the same number in order to isolate the variable on one side of the equation. Once the variable is isolated, the other side of the equation is the value of the variable. [ 37 ]
A similar but more complicated method works for cubic equations, which have three resolvents and a quadratic equation (the "resolving polynomial") relating and , which one can solve by the quadratic equation, and similarly for a quartic equation (degree 4), whose resolving polynomial is a cubic, which can in turn be solved. [14]
Even for the first root that involves at most two square roots, the expression of the solutions in terms of radicals is usually highly complicated. However, when no square root is needed, the form of the first solution may be rather simple, as for the equation x 5 − 5x 4 + 30x 3 − 50x 2 + 55x − 21 = 0, for which the only real solution is
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.
An example of using Newton–Raphson method to solve numerically the equation f(x) = 0. In mathematics, to solve an equation is to find its solutions, which are the values (numbers, functions, sets, etc.) that fulfill the condition stated by the equation, consisting generally of two expressions related by an equals sign.
But if is substituted for in the original equation, the result is the invalid equation =. This counterintuitive result occurs because in the case where x = 0 {\displaystyle x=0} , multiplying both sides by x {\displaystyle x} multiplies both sides by zero, and so necessarily produces a true equation just as in the first example.
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