Question

factor the polynomial -3y^2-3y+36

Answer 1

i would factor out a -3 first to make life easier

Answer 2

To factor -3y^2-3y + 36, perform the following steps:

First factor out what's common to each term if possible. Since -3 is common to each term, we factor that out:

-3(y^2+y-12)

Next, focus on trinomial inside the parentheses. We will need to factor y^2+y-12 by grouping.

To factor y^2+y - 12 by grouping, we must first split the middle term into the appropriate factors. We will need to find two numbers that add to get 1 but multiply to get -12. The two numbers that work are 4 and -3.

So splitting the middle term we get:
y^2 + 4y - 3y - 12

Factoring the first two terms we get:
y(y+4)

Factoring the last two terms, we get:
-3(y+4)

Putting everything back together we get:

-3(y(y+4)-3(y+4))

One last simplification step will be to factor out (y+4) like so:
-3((y+4)(y-3))

This is the complete factored form.

Answer 3

thanks