Question

Factor the trinomial below. Please show your work and check your answer.

a^2 – 5a – 20

I kind of got stuck on this question, I can't seem to get the right answer? Can someone help me out?

Answer 1

Can you think of two numbers whose product is -20?
I can think of -1 times 20
There are others. Can you think of them?
Specifically we are looking for the pair whose sum is -5.

Answer 2

i think this can not be factorized easily you can use quadratic formula in order to get its roots

Answer 3

Have you concluded that there is no such pair of integers?

Answer 4

yes! so its not factorable.

Answer 5

right?

Answer 6

It is prime

Answer 7

yeah, so would I write its just a prime and move on? Or do you think I should write the whole thing out?

Answer 8

yeah i tried but i got only 1 and 20, 4 and 5, 2 and 10 nothing more these can not be sum up to give -5.

Answer 9

Some are going to come up with the idea of finding the roots of the equation. But you are not given an equation so just ignore them.

Answer 10

I would just write prime and move on.

Answer 11

What class are you taking?

Answer 12

okay, thanks for your help, that one confused me a little bit... and I'm taking ALG 1

Answer 13

Then for sure, write prime and move on.

Answer 14

yw

Answer 15

:D