Interactive · 2 questions
Factoring Quadratics -
Here is another way to evaluate a common quadratic form with factor by grouping.
The first step to factor a polynomial with the form when is to find two numbers, and , where and . and are the middle terms. Assume that we have found the two numbers. Since is negative, we need to set and .
Let's plug in and . Remember that we picked , so the polynomial becomes . This can be grouped with parentheses to . These groups share a greatest common factor. The GCF gets factored out, and we are left with an expression of two multiplied binomials. This is the factored form of the quadratic.
Example 1:
Since , and since , we can rewrite our polynomial as follows:
Now, we factor out greatest common factors from our polynomial's first two terms and from our polynomial's last two terms:
Finally, we factor the binomial out of our expression (note that we are only able to do this because our expression consists of two terms that are both being multiplied by the binomial ):
Here's a graphic with another example!

Image source: By Caroline Kulczycky
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