Question

Checking My Answers!
A biologist studied the populations of white-sided jackrabbits and black-tailed jackrabbits over a 5-year period. The biologist modeled the populations, in thousands, with the following polynomials where x is time, in years.

White-sided jackrabbits: 5.5x2 – 9.2x + 6.9
Black-tailed jackrabbits: 5.5x2 + 9.9x + 1.3

What polynomial models the total number of white-sided and black-tailed jackrabbits?
I got 11x^2-0.7+8.2

Answer 1

You are extremely close to the right answer. You did the right thing adding like terms. The only thing is you left out the "x" in the middle term and you have a sign problem in that same middle term.

Answer 2

Would it be -11 instead of positive?

Answer 3

All you have to do at this point is concentrate on the middle term. The rest is fine, and to recap the correct methodology, you correctly combined the x^2 terms together. You also correctly combined the numerics. You are on the right track with the middle terms too, but you just made some "going too fast" type of mistakes.

Answer 4

Okay thanks :)

Answer 5

uw!