Question

find the intercepts and relative extrema for the graph of each function

Answer 1

Calculus course, I'm assuming?

Answer 2

Yeah :/ This online class does not explain much..

Answer 3

To find the y intercept, set x = 0 and solve for y. This will give you a point that looks like (0, a).
To find the x intercepts, just set f(x) = 0 and solve for x. Having the equation in factored form is helpful for this part of the problem. This will give you a list of points with the form (a,0)
To find the extrema, take the derivative, set the derivative equal to 0, and solve for x.
To find the derivative for this kind of problem, the expanded form of the equation will be more useful than the factored form.