Siani Duggan
Mr. McDonalds
Analytic Geometry
24 February 2015
Factoring Expository Essay
A quadratic is anything involving the second power of an unknown quantity or variable.
Factoring is when terms are being multiplied together to get an expression. It is like splitting an expression into a multiplication to get a simpler expression. When factoring numbers or factoring polynomials, one is finding numbers or polynomials that divide out evenly from the original numbers or polynomials. There are 3 important ways in factoring, which are: common factors, special patterns and general quadratics.
A greatest common factor (GCF) is when the greatest factor can divide into two numbers.
When factoring using GCF first one will find all of the GCF for all of the expression. Next, one will divide each term by the GCF. Then the resulting expression will go inside of the parentheses. The result will most likely result in the same thing, but if it doesn’t then the work will have to redone. You can also identify a GCF if you have numbers that can divide each variable and number out.
One special pattern is a perfect square binomial is a trinomial that when factored gives you the square of a binomial. First, one will have to verify that the first term and the third term are both perfect squares. That means that the coefficients are perfect squares. Next one has to verify that the middle term is twice the product of the square roots of the first and third term.
Duggan 1
This means square root a variable term with even exponents, then simply cut the given exponent in half. Last, the standard form is written into a factored form.
Another type of special pattern is called difference of squares. When factoring difference of squares first one will find if the four terms have anything in common. Every difference of squares problem can be factored as, a2 – b2 = (a + b) (a – b) or (a – b) (a + b). So, one will need to factor the types of problems that