Question

On this page,
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-00sc-introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-spring-2011/software/
I tried to calculate the problem using IDLE
give at the bottom of the page:

Positive root of the following equation:
34*x^2 + 68*x - 510
using the quadratic formula
but it seems is unable to process complex numbers, how do I solve the problem?

Answer 1

The roots of this equation are not complex.
Check your maths. :)

Answer 2

yeah got it, discriminant came out to be 272,
roots :
\[(-68\pm272)\div68 \]