What I learned this week is about quadratic trinomials and how to factor them.
A quadratic trinomial looks like this:
Remember that a quadratic trinomial always have a degree of 2.
Basically, what you need to do for factoring is find two numbers that will multiply to “c”, and also they must add together to have a sum that’s equal to “b”.
We must not forget signs (- / +) and how they work because they’re also necessary for this unit!
E.g.
Find factors of 6:
1 x 6 ; -1 x -6
2 x 3 ; -2 x -3
Now, what will add to “5”?
1 + 6 = 7 (NO!)
2 + 3 = 5 (YES!)
So now, we’re using 2 and 3 as factors.
As you’ve noticed, what you did was like doing the FOIL method backwards. For information about FOIL METHOD, check out my blog post about FOIL.