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Completeing The Square

Completeing The Square Some quadratics are fairly simple to solve because they are of the form "something-with-x squared equals some number", and then you take the square root of both sides. An example would be: (x 4)2 = 5 x 4 = sqrt(5) x = 4 sqrt(5) x = 4 sqrt(5) and x = 4 + sqrt(5)

Unfortunately, most quadratics don't come neatly squared like this. For your average everyday quadratic, you first have to use the technique of "completing the square" to rearrange the quadratic into the neat "(squared part) equals (a number)" format demonstrated above. For example: Find the x-intercepts of y = 4x2 2x 5.

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You will need rounded form for "real life" answers to word problems, and for graphing. But (warning!) in most other cases, you should assume that the answer should be in "exact" form, complete with all the square roots. When you complete the square, make sure that you are careful with the sign on the x-term when you multiply by one-half. If you lose that sign, you can get the wrong answer in the end, because you'll forget what goes inside the parentheses. Also, don't be sloppy and wait to do the plus/minus sign until the very end. On your tests, you won't have the answers in the back, and you will likely forget to put the plus/minus into the answer. Besides, there's no reason to go ticking off your instructor by doing something wrong when it's so simple to do it right. On the same note, make sure you draw in the square root sign, as necessary, when you square root both sides. Don't wait until the answer in the back of the book "reminds" you that you "meant" to put the square root symbol in there. If you get in the habit of being sloppy, you'll only hurt yourself! When you have a Quadratic Equation of form ax + bx + c which is not possible to be factorized, you can use technique called completing the square. To complete the square means creating a polynomial with three terms that results into a perfect square. To start with, rewrite the quadratic expression given as ax + bx + c and move the constant term 'c' to right side of equation to get the form ax + bx = - c. Divide this complete equation constant factor a if a 1 to get x + (b / a) x = -c / a.

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Divide coefficient of 'x' i.e. (b / a) by 2 and it now becomes (b / 2a) and then square it to get (b / 2a) . Add (b / 2a) to both sides of equation to get: x + (b / a) x + (b / 2a) = -c / a + (b / 2a) . Next step would we writing left side of equation as perfect square: [x + (b / 2a)] = -c / a + (b / 2a) . For example, lets take an expression: 4x + 16x - 20. Where, a = 4, b = 16 and c = -20. Moving constant 'c' to right side we get 4x + 16x = 20. Next divide both sides of equation by 4 to get: x + 4x = 20 / 4. Taking half of 4 which is coefficient of 'x' and then squaring it to get: (4 / 2) = 4, Add 4 to your equation: x + 4x + 4 = 5 + 4, or x + 4x + 4 = 9, Making left side a perfect square we get: (x + 2) 2 = 9, or x = 1, -5.

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