Simplify
Factor
Evaluate
Let the fun begin!
Saturday, January 24, 2009
My First Day Back!
Yesterday was the first day of the semester. Time to figure out how to teach again. I met my first class. They seem like great kids. We also had a Math/Science department adjunct meeting. Things went real well. Paul Argazzi even gave me three new problems. These are fun.
Simplify
Factor
Evaluate
Let the fun begin!
Simplify
Factor
Evaluate
Let the fun begin!
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2 comments:
I was wondering if anybody can further simplify what I come up with for the middle problem.
(x^2-5/2+(3/2)i)(x^2-5/2-(3/2)i)
The first problem works out to
-5+2i or 5-2i
and the last is, naturally,
log cabin
The middle problem intrigued me so much I continued to work on it by factoring my two quadratics. This gave me four factors. I ended up making a calculation error (I later learned) so I won't include them here. It seemed to me I must be missing something though because my result was pretty complex (pun unintentional but I'll take it).
So, I asked Paul for some help. He gave me his solution and it is really cool.
If you would like to see if you can find it yourself, here's a hint: add and subtract an x^2 term in the original expression so you end of with the difference of two squares.
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