ADVANCED MATHEMATICS

DML 232

CHAPTER 2
 QUADRATICS
2.1 QUADRATIC EQUATIONS

 The standard form of a quadratic equation is

 The only requirement here is that we have an in the equation.

 This term will be present in the equation by requiring .
 Note however, that it is okay if b and/or c are zero.
 There are many ways to solve quadratic equations. We will look at three of
them over the course of the next section; Solving by Factoring, Square Root
Property, Completing the Square, Quadratic Formula
2.2 SOLVING BY FACTORING

 As the heading suggests we will be solving quadratic equations here by

factoring them. To do this we will need the following fact.

 This fact is called the zero factor property or zero factor principle. It means that
if a product of two terms is zero then at least one of the terms had to be zero to
start off with.
 To solve a quadratic equation by factoring we first must move all the terms over
to one side of the equation. Doing this serves two purposes.
 First, it puts the quadratics into a form that can be factored.
 Secondly, and probably more importantly, in order to use the zero factor
property we MUST have a zero on one side of the equation. If we don’t have a
zero on one side of the equation we won’t be able to use the zero factor
property.
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 Example 1 Solve by factoring.

 First, get everything on side of the equation and then factor.

 Now at this point we’ve got a product of two terms that is equal to
zero. This means that at least one of the following must be true.

Note that each of these is a linear equation that is easy enough to solve. What this tell us is that
we have two solutions to the equation

and
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 Example 2 Solve by factoring.

 The first thing that we’re going to need to do here is to clear the
denominators out by multiplying both sides of the equation with

 We will need to avoid and .

So, the two solutions to this equation are,

Exercise 1
Solve each of the following equations by factoring.

 1. Answer:
 2. Answer:
 3. Answer:
 4. Answer:
 5. Answer:
2.3 SOLVING BY SQUARE ROOT PROPERTY

 For the second method of solving quadratics, we’ll be looking at the use of
the square root property

 The symbol is read as : “plus or minus” and that is exactly what it tells us.
 This symbol is shorthand, that tells us that we really have two numbers here.
One is and the other is .
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 Example 3 Solve by square root property.
 This is a fairly simple problem so here is the work for this equation.

 So, there are two solutions to this equation,

 Remember this means that there are really two solutions here
and
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 Example 4 Solve by square root property.
Exercise 2
Solve each of the following equations by factoring.

 1. Answer:
 2. Answer:
 3. Answer:
2.4 SOLVING BY COMPLETING THE SQUARE

 It is called as completing the square because of the process in the

solution. So, we should first define what completing the square is. Let’s start
with

and notice that the x2 has a coefficient of one that is required in order to
do the completing of square process. Now, to this, lets add

This process is called as completing the square and if we do all the arithmetic correctly
we can guarantee that the quadratic will factor as a perfect square.
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 Example 5 Solve by completing the square.

 Notice that we kept the minus sign here even though it will always drop out
after we square things. The reason for this will be apparent in a
second. Let’s now complete the square.

 Now, this is a quadratic that hopefully you can factor fairly

quickly. However notice that it will always factor as x plus the blue number
we computed above that is in the parenthesis (in our case that is -8).
 This is the reason for leaving the minus sign. It makes sure that we don’t
make any mistakes in the factoring process.
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 Example 6 Solve by completing the square.
Exercise 3
Solve each of the following equations by factoring.

 1. Answer: and
 2. Answer:
2.5 SOLVING BY QUADRATIC FORMULA
 We can derive the quadratic formula by completing the square on the
general quadratic formula in standard form.
 The solution to any quadratic equation provided that we start off in
standard form
,
is the following formula
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 Example 7 Solve by using the quadratic formula.

 So, the first thing that we need to do here is to put the equation in standard
form.

 At this point we can identify the values for the quadratic formula. For this
equation we have.

 Notice the “-” with c. It is important to make sure that we carry any minus
signs along with the constants.
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 Example 8 Solve by using the quadratic formula.
Exercise 4
Solve each of the following equations by using quadratic formula.

 1. Answer: and

 2. Answer:

 3. Answer: and
 2.6 QUADRATIC FUNCTION AND ITS GRAPH
 In this section we need to review some of the basic ideas in graphing. It is assumed that
you’ve seen some graphing to this point and so we aren’t going to go into great depth
here. We will only be reviewing some of the basic ideas.
 We will start off with the Rectangular or Cartesian coordinate system. This is just the
standard axis system that we use when sketching our graphs. Here is the Cartesian
coordinate system with a few points plotted.
 The horizontal and vertical axes, typically called the x-axis and the y-axis respectively,
divide the coordinate system up into quadrants as shown above. In each quadrant we
have the following signs for x and y.

 Each point in the coordinate system is defined by an ordered pair of the form . The
first number listed is the x-coordinate of the point and the second number listed is the y-
coordinate of the point. The ordered pair for any given point, is called
the coordinates for the point.

 The point where the two axes cross is called the origin and has the coordinates The point
where the two axes cross is called the origin and has the coordinate .
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 Example 9 Sketch the graph of

 It helps to have an idea of what this graph is liable to look like when picking
values of x. So, don’t worry at this point why we chose the values that we
did. Here is a table of values for this equation.
 Let’s verify the first one and we’ll leave the rest to you to verify. For the first
one we simply plug into the equation and compute y.

Here is the graph of this equation.

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 Example 9 Determine the x-intercepts and y-intercepts for
 Let’s first find the y-intercept(s). Again, we do this by setting and
solving for y.

 So, there is a single y-intercept :

 The work for the x-intercept(s) is almost identical except in this case we set
and solve for x.

 For this equation there are two x-intercepts : and

Exercise 5
Determine the x-intercepts and y-intercepts for each of the following equations.

 1. Answer: and

 2. Answer: and