Week 11 – Math 10

Here are some strategies you can use to see if an expression is factorable:

  1. Check for a greatest common factor. If each term has a common factor, it can be moved to the front of the expression. This shows that the polynomial is factorable, and makes it much simpler:

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In both terms, there is a coefficient of 7, so it becomes the coefficient of the new expression.

2. Difference of squares. If the expression is a binomial that has subtraction between the two terms, then you know that the factored version has both a negative and positive sign:

13237642_1117662661631343_3708590824916758468_n

3. Check for patterns. If the expression is a trinomial with a pattern of x^2 + x + # , then it is factorable. Even if the expression isn’t a trinomial, if that pattern works, then it’s factorable. For example, x^3 + x^2 + x + #.

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