Question

Factor x^3+2x^2-11x-12

Answer 1

please answer the question

Answer 2

( x +4 )( x +1 )( x -3 )

Answer 3

so how did you do that?

Answer 4

Can you show me the steps?

Answer 5

@melbel

Answer 6

are you a programmer?

Answer 7

if you are, that's awesome

Answer 8

Yeah, sorry, I was on another question.

Answer 9

Okay, for this one, I plugged it into my calculator and found all the zeroes. What you can do to do it by hand is to look at 12 and find multiples of it. (I started with +- 1 since it's a good place to start.)

So test for +1 by plugging in +1 for x.
It doesn't work (it doesn't equal zero), so plug in -1, it works, so it's (x+1)
So you've found the first factor, so you can factor (x+1) out by doing synthetic division and you'll be left with a much nicer polynomial (on which you can continue factoring.)

Yes, I'm a programmer. :)

Answer 10

Okay I forgot how to do synthetic division and I was just wondering if there was an easy trick for these questions.
I'm learning a little programming now. Which languages have you learned?