Monday 13 October 2014

Factoring Polynomials and Dividing Polynomials

We started by factoring a quadratic without any instruction. Here are some photos of student work and my work. Some used a "short cut" and others used area = length * width.

 
Next we divided a cubic by a linear function. Some students wanted to use the long division algorithm but I encourage all to use the area = length * width model. We also verified that our solution was correct.
 
Here is some of the notes that I put on my whiteboard.
Next we talked about linear factors that divided in evenly would have a remainder of zero. Therefore if we can find a number that makes the function zero i.e. f(a) = 0 then x - a is a factor or f(a/b) = 0 then bx - a is a factor. Here are some examples with sketches of the graphs(three different questions). First one is my work.
 






 
We then went back and divided a Quartic by a quadratic to get a quadratic quotient and a linear remainder.







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