This week in Pre-Calculus 11 we learned about factoring polynomials.  Ms. Burton gave a very useful acronym Can Divers Pee Easily Underwater.

Common

Difference of squares

Pattern

Easy

Ugly

These are the steps that help break down a polynomial and properly factor it. In this blog post I am going to focus on Ugly polynomials because it was something I struggled with. There are multiply ways to factor ugly polynomials but I prefer the square method. This is my favourite because it looks nice, its easy to understand, and breaks it down right to the answer.

First I identified is there was anything in common, if there was a difference of squares, or a pattern.

I noticed the pattern of a normal polynomial, then asked if it is easy or ugly? You can identify this by looking infront of the squares variable, so if there is no coefficient then it is easy but if there is a coefficient then it is ugly. So this polynomial is ugly.