One thing I learned this week was factoring polynomials, examples on how to do this is…

First, there are three steps that you need to look for when factoring.

The first is to look if the numbers have anything in common in which you can divide them by, second and third is to see if the polynomial has 2 or 3 terms. If a polynomial has 2 terms or called a binomial, the first thing you need to look for is the difference of squares, in order for it to be a difference of squares all the numbers need to be perfect squares and their needs to be a minus sign, if any of these do not apply then it is not factorable, EX…

for the 3 terms called a trinomial, you have to make sure it follows the pattern of having an “x squared” a “normal x” and a “number” if these are met then in order to factor it you have to find two numbers that multiply to the number of the trinomial but also add-up to the coefficient of “x”, EX…

As you can see we have the pattern followed, now all we need to use is product and sum to factor, for this we have to look at all the 2 numbers that multiply to make 32 while also adding up to 12, as you can see the 4 and 8 are circled because multiplied they make 32 and added they make 12.