Question

hello i am solving this problem in python IDLE ?
Positive root of the following equation:
34*x^2 + 68*x - 510
i wrote this >>>import math
math.sqrt(34*x^2 + 68*x - 510) and press enter but it came out error...could anyone tell me where wrong, is it not sqrt ?

Answer 1

From where does Python get the value of x? Do you know what operator precedence is?

Answer 2

what kind of error msg do you get? did you define x? also make sure you got positive number in you math.sqrt().

Answer 3

the exercise asks to calculate the positive root of 34*x^2 + 68*x - 510, i don't know what operator precedence is i'm new to all of this, the error say "name x is not defined"
so how do i define "x"

Answer 4

just make a line above your formula: x = 8 for example. Python use "=" to define variables. you will get there shortly...

Answer 5

True
Man you can't use Python to solve mathematical problems without coding. use Microsoft mathematics instead.

Answer 6

The roots of a quadratic expression are the solutions when the equation equals zero.
For this particular expression, there is one negative root and one positive root.
I won't tell you what they are, as I don't know exactly what your problem is.
Simply taking the square root of the expression will not do the job.
To use python to find the roots, I imagine that you will need to use the quadratic formula.
\[x = \left( -b \pm \sqrt{b ^{2}-4ac} \right)/2a\]

Where a, b and c are the coefficients in the expression:
\[ax ^{2}+bx+c\]

So coefficient a = 34, b = 68 and c = -510 for this case.

I hope that helps? Or has it just made you more confused.

I am only beginning in this too, so I am going to take up this challenge and write some code!

:)