Mathematics in Plain English

March 2, 2011 |

Author Open Formula

In order to understand the math, you have to speak the language. The problem is that mathematics, unlike the French or German or any other spoken language, this dialect is full of difficulties and sometimes completely incomprehensible. And in mathematics, even when you understand something, yet often feel as if you really need to understand further.

A polynomial is an expression found in algebra. Technically a polynomial of degree n is an expression of the form a (n) x ^ n + a ^ (n-1) x (n-1) + … + A (1) x + a (0), where each of the terms a (n) corresponds to an integer, n-^ x follows correspond to the exponents and are positive integers n and (n) No are equal to 0 (if they were then this would not be a polynomial of degree n). In plain English a polynomial is an expression such as 3x ^ 4 + 2x ^ 3 – x + 4 or 2x ^ 2 – 3x + 1. The degree is the maximum that occurs in the expression. Thus, the first polynomial is of degree 4 and the second is of degree 2.

The polynomial written above using the variable x, and this is more common, however, that could easily have written a polynomial in some other letter or variable, and some other common options would be and letters or t. Note that changing the letter is written to the polynomial does not change the nature or behavior in any way.

Polynomials are just one type of algebraic expression. They are very useful in modeling many real-world problems that occur in many ways. In more advanced courses, polynomials are to serve as substitutes for other functions for which no apparent similarity is evident. Thus, the incredible versatility of polynomials.