Question

Please Help i give medals
You are having a meeting with the CEO of a technology company. You have interpreted the number of laptops produced versus profit as the function P(x) = x4 -3x3 -8x2 + 12x + 16. Describe to the CEO what the graph looks like. Use complete sentences, and focus on the end behaviors of the graph and where the company will break even (where P(x) = 0).

Answer 1

Help please

Answer 2

P(x) will look like this:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=y%3Dx%5E4+-3x%5E3+-8x%5E2+%2B+12x+%2B+16

Answer 3

how would you explain how you got it

Answer 4

Ur prob does not ask "how to" get it but it asks for a description of what the graph looks like. So it is perfectly fine to use wolframalpha to plot the graph and write up the description yourself.

Answer 5

Okay thanks i was just asking for self knowledge but thats fine thanks anyways

Answer 6

Welcome! For self knowledge, it is a 4th degree polynominal so it can be of many different shapes. In general, u would have to set up a spreadsheet n calculate the values of P(x) over a range of x. good luck :)

Answer 7

See the link for info on polynomial end behavior. http://www.purplemath.com/modules/polyends.htm
Basically your polynomial is of even degree (4) and your leading coefficient is positive (1) so the function increases toward infinity as x increases toward infinity. It's a reasonable assumption that you're only interested in the part of the graph where x≥0 since x is units sold, so for the break even part, find the positive zeros of P(x). You can actually factor your equation so the zeros are easy to pick out