Question

Factor Completely
3x^2 + 17x + 10

Answer 1

I have a neat trick for factoring quadratics of the form ax^2+bx+c, where a=/= 0.

So first multiply the constant term by the coefficient of the quadratic term, so a*c=30 in this case. Then list the multiples of 30, and you should find that 15 and 2 are both multiples of 30. Hence we can rewrite this interestingly enough as 3x^2+15x+2x+10, therefore

3x(x+5)+2(x+5) ===> (3x+2)(x+5)